WAB: "Fragments" |
The following contribution was presented first on a symposium of European archivists
at The Royal Library in Stockholm on September 20th, 2000. Original publication on WAB's website
(2001.1.1).
Naturally, manuscript collections make empirical data, i.e., the documents they store, available for research - that is their primary task. However, the people who do this do it in their function as archivists and librarians, i.e., without themselves engaging in research upon the materials they store. Between the latter and the research scholars, who come into those archives and libraries, be it from universities, private institutions or out of personal interest, there is roughly speaking a basic division of labor. The archivist, who is at the same time research scholar, and the research scholar, who is an archivist, is, again roughly speaking, an exceptional figure. There is no reason why this must be so. In my model the two functions are combined in a way that is fruitful for both activities.
The more the archives grew - today it harbors some 150 literary estates - the more intensive its research activities became -16 research projects are currently being pursued on its premises. Six persons are charged, apart from their other duties, with the task of archiving. However, the 15 scholars employed on the projects also participate in ordering papers in the archives. For some two decades a new profession has been developing - partly automatically, partly on the basis of conscious decisions -- at the Brenner Archives, that of the archivist who at the same time pursues research into such topics as literature, philosophy cultural history and the like. Besides that the institute runs a "House of Literature" or literary forum which sponsors with readings, performances and exhibitions (some of which even circulate abroad).
On the basis of what has in the meantime become long experience I would like to propose a thesis, which I ask you to take cognizance of "good-naturedly" - "gut müthig" to speak with Friedrich Hölderlin. It runs as follows.
This thesis can be confirmed from several points of view. First, there is the demand to work efficiently in a society increasingly obsessed with rationalization. It bears nowhere more heavily than upon the cultural and research facilities of nations and regions. All in all, in our society, as it is currently developing intellectually- oriented decision-making in matters pertaining to culture is becoming increasingly rare. Policies are determined frequently on the basis of a superficial market-rationality with an ever-decreasing emphasis upon the historical, aesthetic or religious significance of the matter at hand. The results of such political decisions frequently show it.
The time when culturally committed citizens confidently deposited the papers of their late lamented creative relatives in the regional archives or museum or in the national library, with a view to their eventually being ordered professionally and systematically in the context of a dissertation or for publication, is in my opinion as obsolete as the proverbial aversion of scholars to concern themselves with what is in archives beyond the absolute minimum. Literary archives as well as all humanistic institutions generally, must avoid casting upon themselves the negative image of being encapsulated solipsistically in an "ivory tower". Both the depot archives and the proverbial detached, absent-minded professor are in danger of becoming extinct species. I suggest that we are in fact in a position to make a virtue of the necessity to rationalize our activities by doing so in a way that clearly contributes to the more efficient use of the cultural heritage that currently for the most part lies buried in archives and library manuscript collections. However, here efficiency is tied to solid scholarship, as we shall see, i.e., to upgrading the status of the culture of the past in an increasingly a-historical world.
The second point substantiating my thesis bears upon the growth of knowledge. The papers assembled in archives at a certain point in time provide subjects for research. That is obvious. In the case of the Brenner Archives they provide not only material for individual research projects but also an increasingly thick context emerges from them collectively, i.e., as the they compliment one another. This is only possible if we look at the obverse of the obvious truth we have referred to already: project-research in literary archives, what I call programmatic research, leads to a deeper understanding of the significance of the holdings of archives and that in a twofold sense: through the technique of scholarly commentary the individual texts are illuminated but over time commentaries upon individual texts or the work of individual authors come to illuminate each other in ways that can be positively startling. Thus a new research horizon as it were comes into existence and that can have consequences for the most minute details of the process of archiving as well as for the public presentation of the fruits of research.
In this way we create the possibility to shape the disparate holdings of literary archives into a living corpus. This can also be done in terms of electronic cataloguing, which can be continued in the form of an electronic edition with commentary.
I am not naive enough to believe that this model that has been developed in a relatively small university department can simply be transferred to any large collection in a large library, whose holdings reach back a couple of hundred years with equally well-entrenched administrative methods. Yet, if I am not mistaken, it will be necessary, even there, to speak about the possibilities of a permanent resident programatic research. The estimated profit with respect to efficiency, the growth of knowledge and the future of our cultural heritage, not to mention the upgraded status for archives and manuscript collections in libraries that it brings with it ought to justify both financial expenditure on the part of governments and intellectual expenditure on the part of archivists and research scholars - or, better, archivists as research scholars.
Walter Methlagl: Literary Archives - Manuscript Librarians as Scholars
Keywords: Brenner Archives, Cultural history, Georg Trakl, InteLex Corporation, Literary archives, Ludwig von Ficker, Ludwig Wittgenstein's correspondence, Manuscript collections, Research rationalization, Research strategies, Scholarly commentaries, Wittgenstein ArchivesLiterary Archives as Research Archives
I shall briefly present a model for the future development of literary archives, which currently pursue the goals of traditional manuscript collections i.e., acquiring literary estates, individual autographs, autograph collections, personal libraries belonging to literary estates as well as the archival processing, permanent safekeeping and cataloging of documents. Such institutions are designated "literary archives" even if what they store are philosophical, theological, musical, pictorial, architectural or photographic materials from the 19th and 20th centuries, which document what is culturally transmitted generally, and not merely literary manuscripts in the strict sense. In my model the mode of handling these materials differs so pronouncedly from that of traditional manuscript collections that we should probably speak of a distinct type of institution, which we might call "research archives".Naturally, manuscript collections make empirical data, i.e., the documents they store, available for research - that is their primary task. However, the people who do this do it in their function as archivists and librarians, i.e., without themselves engaging in research upon the materials they store. Between the latter and the research scholars, who come into those archives and libraries, be it from universities, private institutions or out of personal interest, there is roughly speaking a basic division of labor. The archivist, who is at the same time research scholar, and the research scholar, who is an archivist, is, again roughly speaking, an exceptional figure. There is no reason why this must be so. In my model the two functions are combined in a way that is fruitful for both activities.
The Brenner Archives
The model that I am speaking of is not a mere will-o’the- wisp. My remarks are based upon the development of a specific institution that has existed since 1965. I refer to the Brenner Archives Research Institute of the University of Innsbruck. Its original contents was a single literary estate, the papers of Ludwig von Ficker, who edited the Innsbruck periodical Der Brenner, a sort of pendant to Karl Kraus’s Die Fackel in Vienna, and was for that reason of more than local significance. At first the Brenner Archives was a sub-section of the Department of German Studies at the University of Innsbruck. This connection determined that research would play a larger than normal role in the archives’ development from the start.The more the archives grew - today it harbors some 150 literary estates - the more intensive its research activities became -16 research projects are currently being pursued on its premises. Six persons are charged, apart from their other duties, with the task of archiving. However, the 15 scholars employed on the projects also participate in ordering papers in the archives. For some two decades a new profession has been developing - partly automatically, partly on the basis of conscious decisions -- at the Brenner Archives, that of the archivist who at the same time pursues research into such topics as literature, philosophy cultural history and the like. Besides that the institute runs a "House of Literature" or literary forum which sponsors with readings, performances and exhibitions (some of which even circulate abroad).
On the basis of what has in the meantime become long experience I would like to propose a thesis, which I ask you to take cognizance of "good-naturedly" - "gut müthig" to speak with Friedrich Hölderlin. It runs as follows.
Collective Research Strategies
Literary archives, including manuscript collections in libraries, cannot content themselves with serving the various and sundry interests of individual users of their collections. On the contrary, it will be necessary for them to develop and pursue collective research strategies proportioned to the nature of their holdings. The aim should be to organize research programs that systematically establish the cultural significance of archives’ holdings on the basis of articulating the context that is immanent in the sorts of documents that I have referred to above as "literary". No manuscript collection should be without its own research center. The research in question takes the form of producing scholarly commentary on the holdings, i.e., commentary analogous to the sort that is done in producing a critical edition of a text, i.e., commentary upon everything "objectively" mentioned in a document or set of documents, i.e., names, place, dates, events, publications etc.This thesis can be confirmed from several points of view. First, there is the demand to work efficiently in a society increasingly obsessed with rationalization. It bears nowhere more heavily than upon the cultural and research facilities of nations and regions. All in all, in our society, as it is currently developing intellectually- oriented decision-making in matters pertaining to culture is becoming increasingly rare. Policies are determined frequently on the basis of a superficial market-rationality with an ever-decreasing emphasis upon the historical, aesthetic or religious significance of the matter at hand. The results of such political decisions frequently show it.
The time when culturally committed citizens confidently deposited the papers of their late lamented creative relatives in the regional archives or museum or in the national library, with a view to their eventually being ordered professionally and systematically in the context of a dissertation or for publication, is in my opinion as obsolete as the proverbial aversion of scholars to concern themselves with what is in archives beyond the absolute minimum. Literary archives as well as all humanistic institutions generally, must avoid casting upon themselves the negative image of being encapsulated solipsistically in an "ivory tower". Both the depot archives and the proverbial detached, absent-minded professor are in danger of becoming extinct species. I suggest that we are in fact in a position to make a virtue of the necessity to rationalize our activities by doing so in a way that clearly contributes to the more efficient use of the cultural heritage that currently for the most part lies buried in archives and library manuscript collections. However, here efficiency is tied to solid scholarship, as we shall see, i.e., to upgrading the status of the culture of the past in an increasingly a-historical world.
The second point substantiating my thesis bears upon the growth of knowledge. The papers assembled in archives at a certain point in time provide subjects for research. That is obvious. In the case of the Brenner Archives they provide not only material for individual research projects but also an increasingly thick context emerges from them collectively, i.e., as the they compliment one another. This is only possible if we look at the obverse of the obvious truth we have referred to already: project-research in literary archives, what I call programmatic research, leads to a deeper understanding of the significance of the holdings of archives and that in a twofold sense: through the technique of scholarly commentary the individual texts are illuminated but over time commentaries upon individual texts or the work of individual authors come to illuminate each other in ways that can be positively startling. Thus a new research horizon as it were comes into existence and that can have consequences for the most minute details of the process of archiving as well as for the public presentation of the fruits of research.
Cultural Contexts
Let me give you a brief example (our research projects are sketched in the brochure, "Life in the Archives", which also contains a list of the literary remains in the possession of the Brenner Archives and is available upon request from the Brenner Archives web-site). Since a considerable part of the papers of the poet Georg Trakl lies in the Brenner Archives, research into Trakl is an important part of our research program. For example, we have long been at work on a historical-critical facsimile edition of his works. Now, since a large cross-section of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s correspondence also lies in the Brenner Archives, research into Wittgenstein is one of its central preoccupations as well. (Wittgenstein’s collected correspondence will be prepared for publication in electronic form in conjunction with the Wittgenstein Archives at Bergen University in Norway and the electronic publisher, InteLex [Charlottesville, Va., USA]. It will appear in book form later.) Now, the meaning of the fact that in 1988 a letter and a military post card from Georg Trakl to Wittgenstein could turn up wholly unexpectedly in a newly discovered bundle of papers could be quickly established because there were research projects in the Brenner Archives documenting the lives’ work of both of them. At the same time documentary evidence of direct contact between them widened the context in which their lives’ work must be discussed. In effect, establishing that two such famous figures were in contact with one another not only adds to our knowledge of their respective biographies but also illustrates how our conception of an author’s cultural context can suddenly expand radically as projects suddenly come to compliment one another. As such it is a crucial step in articulating how the works of individual authors can be seen as aspect of a single cultural paradigm, whose structure itself becomes in turn an object of research. Thus a dialectical relationship between research in the form of scholarly commentary and cultural history gradually emerges from the activity of articulating the immanent context of the archives’ holdings. At the same time the value and significance of the individual documents in the archives in question rises - in all senses of the word.Living Interdisciplinarity
Having said that, I have anticipated the third and last argument in favor of my thesis. It bears upon cultural theory but is closely bound to the practice of cultural history. Culture, be it the culture of a city, a region, a nation or Europe itself, in all of its forms of expression is transmitted in the papers deposited in archives. Everything relating to cultural transmission can only be properly ordered on the basis of recognizing that culture is always transmitted without respect to disciplinary boundaries. Creative individuals are not for the most part experts in a single small subject as the economy sees them. The poet Georg Trakl also played the piano, painted and read Dostoievski with enthusiasm, whereas his exact contemporary, the philosopher, Wittgenstein, played the clarinet, made a sculpture, built a house and was deeply immersed in Russian literature. Here in Sweden one need merely consider the example of August Strindberg, whose breadth of interests was positively stunning - think only of his paintings, his photography, his musical ideas, his concern for science and mysticism not to mention the fascinating miscellany of the famous "Green Bag". The very fact that all of this is part of a single literary estate bears witness to the fact that the holdings of literary archives also contain the immanent premises according to which they should be investigated, which is to say that the investigation in question must be interdisciplinary. Conversely, researchers, who are themselves archivists or working with archivists in the same institution - stipulate on the basis of the results of their investigations the premises according to which further materials can be found as well as how papers can best be ordered and classified. In the context, say, of an historical- critical edition the long experience won over years the ordering of the papers, say, the genetic ordering of various versions of a text, can proceed more competently and systematically than they do lacking this experience.In this way we create the possibility to shape the disparate holdings of literary archives into a living corpus. This can also be done in terms of electronic cataloguing, which can be continued in the form of an electronic edition with commentary.
I am not naive enough to believe that this model that has been developed in a relatively small university department can simply be transferred to any large collection in a large library, whose holdings reach back a couple of hundred years with equally well-entrenched administrative methods. Yet, if I am not mistaken, it will be necessary, even there, to speak about the possibilities of a permanent resident programatic research. The estimated profit with respect to efficiency, the growth of knowledge and the future of our cultural heritage, not to mention the upgraded status for archives and manuscript collections in libraries that it brings with it ought to justify both financial expenditure on the part of governments and intellectual expenditure on the part of archivists and research scholars - or, better, archivists as research scholars.