OXFORD GERMAN NETWORK

Research Libraries in Germany

German Literature Archive Marbach

The German Literature Archive in Marbach is one of the most important literary institutions within Germany and beyond. The Marbach campus is the setting for a unique ensemble of research library, archive and museum. Original documents from literary estates, along with a wealth of print sources, create an exceptional research environment.

At the core of the collections are the literary estates of important writers and intellectuals from 1750 to the present, along with the archives of institutions including that of the Cotta booksellers – the most important publishing archive of the nineteenth century. Alongside these collections is the largest research library for German-language literature from the Enlightenment up to the present. The art collection includes a unique portrait gallery of German literature and the history of thought.

Scholarship Programme

The Marbach scholarship programme supports ambitious research projects that make use of the archive’s collections. They are offered at four levels: full, postdoctoral, graduate, Masters. Click here for more information.

International Summer School

Every two years, international scholars join with international lecturers for a three-week-long summer school, a project of the GLA Marbach, the University of Stuttgart and the University of Pennsylvania. Click here for more information.

Klassik Stiftung Weimar

The Klassik Stiftung Weimar is a unique ensemble of cultural memorial sites. With more than twenty museums, palaces, historic houses, parks as well as literary and art collections, it is one of the largest and most significant cultural institutions in Germany. Eleven of the Klassik Stiftung’s properties are mentioned in UNESCO’s World Heritage Site list as part of ‘Classical Weimar’.

Duchess Anna Amalia Library
The Duchess Anna Amalia Library is a public research library for literary and cultural history with a collection focusing on German literature from the period around 1800 (Enlightenment through to late Romanticism). It preserves literary documents dating from the ninth to the twenty-first centuries as sources of cultural history and research, indexes them according to form and content and makes them available for use. The library collection amounts to one million articles.
Library website

Goethe and Schiller Archive
The Goethe and Schiller Archive is the oldest literary archive in Germany and one of the world’s central archives of German literature of the 18th and 19th century. It contains 130 estates of writers, scholars, philosophers, composers and fine artists (e.g. Goethe, Schiller, Büchner, Liszt und Nietzsche), 14 archives of publishing houses, associations and literary societies, as well as a large autograph collection. The scientific work of the Goethe and Schiller Archive is being documented by extensive publications (e.g. a historical and critical edition of Goethe’s Faust and a historical and critical edition of Goethe’s letters)
Archive website

Art Collections
The Klassik Stiftung Weimar holds a wide range of art collections. Their history reaches back to the ducal art collections and the collections of Goethe (e.g. the large Graphic Art Collections, today holding approximately 230,000 works). They have been expanded over the centuries and now focus on various genres and eras (e.g. Art Nouveau / Henry van de Velde or Bauhaus).
Collections website

For an overview of the research activities carried out by the Klassik Stiftung Weimar and information on the research scholarships for young academics, please click here.

Research Libraries in Germany

Herzog August Library Wolfenbüttel

Founded in 1572, the Herzog August Library is one of the oldest libraries in the world, and one of the very few to have survived without sustaining any losses to its collections of European textual and visual sources from the early Middle Ages to the late eighteenth century. As an independent research institute it offers a broad range of programmes for guest scholars and interns, including work with the library’s collections of prints, engravings and rare books; book-buying at auction to augment the library’s seventeenth-century holdings (Sammlung Deutscher Drucke); conservation management; and digital editing.

Library website

Interns gain insights into:

Manuscripts and special collections: Introduction to paleography, experience in in-depth cataloguing of manuscripts, experience in preparing exhibitions, work with the collections of prints and engravings.
Rare books/ conservation: Experience in in-depth cataloguing of rare books, experience in preparing exhibitions, assistance in a program of book-buying at auction to complement the library’s 17th-century holdings (Sammlung Deutscher Drucke), experience in conservation management
Digital editions, html/xml: Introduction to digital editing and current standards, instruction in html/xml, experience in text encoding
Research projects: Work experience in a current library or Forschungsverbund project (‘writers’ libraries’, ‘image politics’ or ‘text and frame’)