Book Losses

During the fire at the Herzogin Anna Amalia Library, not only a large part of the historical building and works of art were destroyed, but above all culturally historic and unique book collections were lost.

Anna Amalia’s (1739-1807) collection of sheet music – manuscripts and rare prints such as a choral part by Orlando di Lasso from 1588 (cat. no. S 4:12), a manuscript of a score with arias and choir sections to Lila (Goethe) in four scenes by Siegmund, Baron von Seckendorff dating from 1777, and also a manuscript of the Grand Sonata for piano four hands in A-flat Major op. 92, by Johann Nepomuk Hummel. Altogether the collection contained 95 works by Hummel. Only five of them and a small fragment remain. 52 of Hummel’s works were at least microfilmed.

Another manuscript lost was that of Pasquale Anfossi (1727-1797), La Maga Circa Farsetta a Cinque Voci (in un Atto Solo Musica) dating from 1788. The German translation of the text was partly written by Goethe.

In addition, further valuable prints from the 16th and 17th centuries were destroyed, in particular a large part of the library of the former Wittenberg university professor and director of the Weimar library, Konrad Samuel Schurzfleisch (1641-1708) and of his brother, Heinrich Leonhard Schurzfleisch (1664-1722). Individual bits of this collection have been saved, for example a funeral oration on the occasion of the death of the professor’s widow, Christine Walther, dating from 1711 (cat. no. S 1:80).

Most of the printed works of the “Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft” (Fruitful Society), the first association for the German language, founded in Weimar in 1617, were also lost. Among these: “Die Fortpflantzung der hochlöblichen Fruchtbringenden Gesellschaft...” (The Propagation of the highly admirable Fruitful Society...), a society essay of the association from 1651 (cat. no. D 6 : 18 f and D 6 : 18 f a). The famous “Neu-Sprossende Teutsche Palmbaum” (Newly Sprouting German Palm Tree) dating from 1668 was not burned, contrary to other contradictory information (cat. no. D, 6 : 19). Unfortunately, parts of the estate of Wilhelm Fröhner (1834-1925), an important archaeological researcher and collector, were sacrificed to the flames, including several omnibus volumes from diverse sub-disciplines of archaeology (e.g. cat. no. 8°XXXIX : 62 z 116).

The estate of the anti-semitic, nationalistic author Adolf Bartels (1862-1945), which was comprised of several thousand books, was also destroyed. In contrast, the bible collection which had also been kept in the rococo hall and many other valuable volumes could be rescued from the lower floors. The fact that they had been loaned out for an exhibition, or that they were stored elsewhere in general, is the reason why several parts of the above-mentioned categories were kept from harm, such as the Mozart manuscript of the “Concerto in B-flat” (cat. no. Mus V : 125).

Books rescued from the attic

Photo: Maik Schuck

Replacement

Since the library fire on September 2nd 2004, the Herzogin Anna Amalia Library has been engaged – next to the restoration work – in replacing the losses by second-hand purchases. Primarily those works that were completely burned, or for which restoration costs would be too high, are to be replaced by comparable copies. Adequate enlargements of the decimated old collection are also being realised in the process. In this context, altogether 22,000 works from the 16th to the 20th centuries were integrated into the collection until now. 10,000 of these books were gifts from other libraries and private collectors after the fire, and 12,000 were strategic second-hand purchases. Altogether, more than 5,300 burned works could be replaced by a bibliographically identical copy. Of the purchases and gifts, seventy titles date from the 16th century, five hundred works from the 17th century, and more than nine hundred are from the 18th century. Examples are the richly illustrated Naturgeschichte der Vögel (Natural History of Birds) by Pierre Belon du Mans (published in 1755 in Paris by Gilles Corrozet), Georg Andreas Böeckler’s German edition of the Architectura curiosa nova (published in 1664 with numerous copper plates in Nürnberg by Fürst) or the Vita of margrave Leopold von Österreich (Ein kurzer Inhalt und Extrakt deß Lebens und der Wunderzeichen Leopoldi, sechsten Marggrafen zu Österreich – A Brief Content and Extract of the Life and Wonder Signs of Leopold, the sixth margrave of Austria, published in 1593 in Graz by Georg Widmanstetter), a work that had not been found in any German library until now. For classical editions such as the Historia naturalis by Plinius the elder (published in 1525 in Venice by Sessa and Serena), or funeral sermons such as the one held for Jacob Heinrich Born (published in 1775 in Leipzig by Breitkopf), or the burned printed works which originated from the circle of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (Fruitful Society) such as the extremely rare “Frauenzimmer Gesprechspielen” by Georg Philipp Harsdörffer, who was also called the “Player” (in eight volumes, published in the years from 1644 until 1649 by Wolfgang Endter in Nürnberg), subsitute copies could be purchased at second-hand bookshops and auctions; the copy of the Gesprechsspiele came from the Fürstlich-Oettingen-Wallerstein’schen Library. A private lady patron donated the substitute copy of the “Fortgepflantzten Musikalisch-Poetischen Lustwald” (The Propagated Musical and Poetic Leisure Forest) dating from 1657 (from the private estate of the author, Georg Neumarck) for the Weimar copy that burned. Weimar library efforts are supported by the libraries of the Collection of German Prints who represent Weimar at auctions, or – like the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel – by giving doubles from their own collections to the Weimar library as a gift. Further help came from the Stadtbibliothek (City Library) of Mainz, which searched its historical collection of doubles for replacement copies and collection additions and donated several hundred volumes.

The first attempts to compare by computer the data banks of the lost and damaged books on the one hand and the Central Index of Second-Hand Books (Zentrales Verzeichnis Antiquarischer Bücher – ZVAB) listed on the internet on the other hand, are methodically interesting. In spite of all of these efforts, even in the long term, only part of the losses will be replaceable – as far as replacement is even possible: It was possible to replace the lost print of Johann Gottfried Walther’s Musicalisches Lexicon (Music Dictionary, published in 1732 in Leipzig by Wolffgang Deer), for example, but the copy that burned contained the author’s hand-written dedication to duke Ernst August of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach, and therefore is only equivalent in regard to its text content.