[SCA-BMDL] Re: [MEDTEXTL] Karlsruhe mss. sale (fwd)

[Gretchen Beck]

Thought this might be of interest to people here.

toodles, margaret
------------ Forwarded Message ------------
Date: Tuesday, September 26, 2006 10:57 AM -0400
From: Rebecca LR Garber <rlrg at UMICH.EDU>
To: MEDTEXTL at LISTSERV.UIUC.EDU
Subject: Re: [MEDTEXTL] Karlsruhe mss. sale

Apologies for cross posting: please forward to help our German colleagues
save a cultural treasure

For those who don't read German, the case is as follows:

The Counts of Baden are broke and need 70 million euros to fix up their
castle (which is the old Cistercian monastery at Salem, which they use as a
boarding school [charging fees] and which is open for public tours [for
which they charge fees]).

The Badische Landesbiliothek (BLB) manuscript holdings include all of the
mss that survived the bombings of WWII, the holdings of the monastery of
Reichenau (due to the 1803 secularization of the monasteries, that gave the
counts of Baden the buildings at Salem), and several other monastic
collections.  It also includes the oldest complete ms of the
*Nibelungenlied*, known as Manuscript C, a priceless literary treasure.

There seems to be some legal questions as to who owns the mss: the Baden
family or the State, which means that the lawyers will make money.

1872 - the Count's library becomes part of the State and Count's library of
Baden.
1918 - end of the monarchy, the library is renamed simply the State Library
of Baden
1954 - agreement between the State of Baden and the "Zähringer Stift" (not
two noble houses as the Baden family claims) which stated that a number of
collections (paintings, coin collections, the "Turkish Booty", and a number
of mss) would be maintained as previously, and would be made accessible to
the public.

This affects the ownership of the mss, as only certain, listed items were
considered part of the "library belonging to the count", and these most
certainly DID NOT include the entire collection, and NEVER included the
collections from the secularization of the monasteries.

Nonetheless, the Baden family is laying claim to *all* of the mss in the
BLB.

However: the family can't auction them off themselves.  Soooooo, the State
of Baden is going to *GIVE* the mss back to the family so they can auction
them!  Since the mss don't appear on any list of cultural monuments, the
State believes that they are of little value, and that no one will care
about some moldy old documents.

The link that Bettina Wagner includes below
http://www.guenther-oettinger.de/index.php?id=297
is the personal page of the CDU MinisterPräsident of Baden-Württemberg.

There is an email form there where one can send messages.  Required fields
are:
Vorname - First name
Nachname - Family/Last name
PLZ - Zip code, postal code  (I suggest entering your country)
E-Mail - email
Betreff - subject (this one is important)

All politics may be local, but most politicians hate to look bad
internationally.  The German press is comparing this to the destruction of
the libraries of Strassburg, Weimar, and Alexandria.  The difference being
that they were destroyed in wars or fires, while this destruction is by the
state at the behest of a family that wants the state to pay for their home
repairs.


Sincerely,
Rebecca LR Garber



Quoting Bettina Wagner <Bettina.Wagner at BSB-MUENCHEN.DE>:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> if you want to voice a protest against the intended sale of the
> manuscripts holdings of the Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe (see
> also my email of yesterday), you can do it via this website
> http://www.guenther-oettinger.de/index.php?id=297
>
> Thank you very much for your support!
>
> For current information, pressreactions etc., see the library's
> website
> http://www.blb-karlsruhe.de/
>
> Yours sincerely,
> Bettina Wagner
>
>
>



Rebecca LR Garber
Independent Scholar  rlrg at umich.edu
German Page Editor   http://the-orb.net/encyclop/high/germany/gerindex.html


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