Bi-national research funding: women writers from the Varnhagen Collection – letters, works, relationships

Poland’s old royal city of Krakow is home to one of the oldest universities and one of the most important libraries in Europe. A team headed by Jörg Paulus, Professor of Archive and Literature Research at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar’s Faculty of Media, is now working with a team of literary scholars from Krakow headed by Professor Jadwiga Kita-Huber to examine manuscripts from the Varnhagen collection, based at the Biblioteka Jagiellońska library in Krakow. 

The »women writers from the Varnhagen Collection – letters, works, relationships« research project, beginning in Weimar and Krakow in early April 2020, incorporates existing technical and institutional networks: cross-border research infrastructure is being used thanks to the »digital humanities«. Scans of the manuscripts provided and described in Krakow will be converted from old German handwriting (cursive »Kurrent« script) to machine-readable formats in both locations and then documented and studied in a digital environment. 

The digital platform being used is coordinated by Dr. Frank Simon-Ritz, director of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar University Library. Dr. Simon-Ritz has already had experience in other digital humanities projects. The funding for the portion of the project being completed in Germany amounts to 546,990 euros. 

Background
The collection primarily contains German correspondence, most of which dates from the late 18th and 19th centuries. It illustrates Europe’s literary, cultural and political life, and is connected to Weimar in many ways. The particular role played by women writers within the collection cannot be overestimated, and can even be considered a kind of corrective measure for the long period during which Weimar’s cultural history focussed on men as intellectual giants.

The project will examine the Varnhagen Collection’s manuscripts by the authors Charlotte von Ahlefeldt, Helmina von Chézy, Amalia von Imhoff, Amalia Schoppe, Fanny Tarnow, Karoline von Woltmann, Caroline de la Motte Fouqué and Amalia von Voigt. Correspondence and a variety of literary relationships mean that the courses of their lives were intricately interconnected, and they can therefore be viewed as mediators between cultures and countries, such as Germany, France and Poland. In addition, the project will examine the wider context of the documents selected, both within and beyond the Varnhagen Collection.

The collection was named after its creator Karl August Varnhagen von Ense (1785–1858), husband of the famous Berlin writer and salonnière Rahel Varnhagen. It is probably the most important private collection of 19th-century handwritten works and contains letters, manuscripts, diaries and notes of all kinds.

Any further questions can be directed to Professor Jörg Paulus:

Prof. Dr. Jörg Paulus
Professorship of Archive and Literature Research
Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Faculty of Media
Bauhausstraße 11 / room 222
99423 Weimar
Tel: +49 (0)3643/58 3752
Email: joerg.paulus[at]uni-weimar.de