Old cities, new archives: Frankfurt

For the sake of being thorough in my tracking down of leper hospitals possibly "reformed" by the Mainz archbishops, I decided to spend a day in Frankfurt's municipal archives. A number of relevant charters have been published (thanks, 19th-century Germans!) but there are also several legal cases and, tantalizingly, letters concerning leprosy diagnosis that haven't been. As I discovered, Frankfurt's institute for city history is located in the former Carmelite cloister (makes a change from the castles preferred by Bavarians.) Fortunately, given my terrible sense of direction, it's very close to the metropolis's opera house… to which, obviously, I know the way. Typically for central Frankfurt, it's sandwiched incongruously between office buildings. The institute holds a museum space as well as the archives, so I approached the main entrance in some uncertainty, more than half expecting to be shown around to a side door. However, I was welcomed warmly by the woman on the desk, shown where to sign in, given a locker key, and told where to put my things: "second door on the left in the cloister walk, and then the reading room is up in the dormitorium." I thanked her, and went through into the cloister walk… and my jaw actually dropped.

In which I try not to fluster archivists

I know, I know, these posts are like London busses. But I had a (mis)adventurous day in Wiesbaden on Monday that just demands to be chronicled. The Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, despite its sonorous name and importance, is tucked up behind a middle school and an Asian grocery west of the central train station, the direction none of the tourists go. The first time I visited its premises, I stopped numerous people for directions, all of whom were a bit confused by the question. The journey was easier on the second time, though; I admired the 19th-century villas I passed, and even knew which side streets to take to avoid pedaling up steep hills. I gave my name at the reception, fed a carefully kept 1 euro piece into one of the lockers in the subterranean space where the coffee automat lives, and headed to the reading room. It was once there that the comical adventures started.

New archives, new cities: Würzburg

I spent the last two days in Würzburg! Two sunny days in this north Bavarian city made a refreshing change to my routine. Most of these sunny days were spent in the archives, of course, which I'd been needing to check out. The Würzburg branch of the Bavarian State Archives lives in several of the 320 rooms of the Baroque residence built by the prince-archbishop from 1720 onwards. (Video of this extraordinary place here; photos are not allowed inside.) Now, be not deceived: the archives are in a rear courtyard in a side wing; the barred windows suggest that the rooms were previously service rooms. But the space is nevertheless impressively spacious, and on Friday morning, I got the reading room to myself, with early morning light streaming through the windows, and the enormous palace gardens waking up on the other side.

Dealing with the head archivist was a bit of an adventure, not only because of his Bavarian accent. I was obliquely critiqued for not showing up on the first day I'd planned to show up; I explained that this was due to my misunderstanding the fact that my "May I view the following manuscripts?"e-mail had received a reply reading "Please send us your postal address so that we can send you information." Apparently this is merely a legal formality, and I was expected. I apologized humbly and repeatedly, and was initiated into Würzburg's organizational system for its Mainz holdings. Not everything was digitalized, I was told; that takes time. It turned out that this meant searching through a variety of typewritten Findbücher (incomplete, the head archivist told me; but everything takes time…) and an impressively large collection of handwritten slips dating to the 1930s, when the charters from Mainz had last been catalogued. Fortunately, the medieval scribes of the codices belonging to the "books from Mainz with various contents" collection had made tables of contents. Is there a patron saint of such scribes? A day devoted to praying fervently for their souls? I think there should be.

Another nice surprise was running into acquaintances. As I was getting a mid-afternoon apple from my locker, a voice behind me said: "So, Mainz is not enough for you?" and I turned to find none other than the amiable Herr Professor who wrestles with 18th-century officialdom and its handwriting. We chatted over our apples before returning to our respective tasks. On the second day (when the Herr Professor had returned to Mainz) the vaguely-familiar man at the desk behind me said "We know each other from Mainz, don't we?" and I placed him as the musicologist responsible for the recent transcription of a Don Giovanni adaptation written for one of Mainz's archbishops shortly after the opera's premiere. These are small encounters… but I mention them because I've missed this sort of companionable chat, the sense of having a routine where one is likely to encounter those with similar interests. In New York, of course, the place where I have such encounters is the opera… but archives are nice places to have them too. Without further rambling, though: photos! Würzburg's archive closes at noon on Friday, so I spent several hours of a pleasantly sunny afternoon exploring the Residence gardens and the city before catching a train back to Mainz.

Helau! Carneval in Mainz

Meenzer Fassenacht, as it's known in the local dialect, is a really big deal around here. It was 3 weeks ago that Steffi, a fellow alto, asked if I was "inzwischen Fassenachterin geworden." From the beginning of February onwards, members of the Carnevalsvereine were active in the streets, with brass ensembles (natürlich) and "Zugplakettcher," little tokens sold to finance the annual parade. Endlich war es dann soweit… for the week leading up to Ash Wednesday, madness was loose in the city; at all times of day, men, women, and children could be seen in costume; bunting and colored paper and silly hats were everywhere. On Monday and Tuesday, the archives and city library were entirely closed! And because I could only answer "So, are you planning to see the parade?" with a stammered "Um… maybe… I probably should…" my choir director took pity on me and practically ordered me to join his parade-going posse. So, gathering my courage in both hands, I headed out (after finishing a conference paper draft in the early morning hours.) I reminded myself that my devoting an entire day to dressing up, admiring a parade, and subsisting largely on punch and popcorn is a textbook example of carnivalesque inversion. Photographic evidence below: