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.
I found the man charged with overseeing the reading room under siege. He was speaking on the telephone with the careful, exasperated enunciation of someone who has been asked a painfully obvious question for the sixth time. Then I fetched up behind the sign saying "Please Announce Yourself," doubtless with the gleam in my eye of one who is bent on finding thirteenth-century papal letters no matter how deeply hidden in a catalog database. Behind me came an old man of choleric complexion, leaning on a walker, with a mercilessly accurate crease in his trousers and an intimidated carnation in his buttonhole. This formidable personage, with an angora-sweater-clad assistant in his wake, began by clearing his throat, and was positively huffing within two minutes, rounding me to get a better angle from which to glint purposefully at the man who was spelling things out on the phone and speaking in half-sentences which began "Yes, if you'd--" The intimidator of carnations and archivists turned out to have an idiosyncratic system of noting down signatures (there is an automated system for ordering things via the reading room's computer terminals, but the beleaguered Lesesaalaufsicht tactfully refrained from mentioning this.) I had sort of stared at the ceiling in a self-effacing manner to indicate that I would not complicate all our lives by insisting on priority over the man and his factotum. I was rewarded not only by the Lesesaalaufsicht's look of gratitude, but by the fact that he and two other attendants of the reading room threw themselves wholeheartedly into my mission of finding things, which turned out to be beset with complications of the filing system of generations.
While I was fiddling about with the database (so strictly categorized that it can conceal things; I recently discovered a chartulary of my Cistercian nuns filed under "account books" rather than their house) the signature I'd called up appeared in the form of an envelope of microfiches. If the papal letter I was looking for was in there, it was well-concealed in a 16th-century set of accounts. Deciphering 16th-century handwriting on microfiche is not something I'm good at, but I think what I need to do is return to the footnote where I found the reference. Then there was the codex that had been away for restoration the last time I was there; the nice Lesesaalaufsicht had said that, when the appropriate colleague came in, he'd ask about pulling it out for me just for a bit. Now he appeared with another microfiche envelope: they hadn't tracked down the restorer yet, but if this would work… I took it with thanks, and paged through the fiches which supposedly contained 4 codices. What they had was an Oculus Memoriae of one of the area's oldest and largest Cistercian houses: very nice too, but not what I was looking for. I explained this to another archive employee, who verified my reports, muttering under his breath about medieval handwriting, and then reinitiated the hunt for the manuscript itself. While I was making the most of the printed sources in the on-site library, the third of my champions for the day appeared again: the manuscript had been given temporarily to yet another colleague of the archive: "Now he is an older gentleman, and appears to have just stepped out for an hour unexpectedly," I was told. "We did look in his office, but it… I don't know, perhaps you know how it is with some scholars' offices…?" I suppressed a grin, as I thought this might seem to make light of his earnest professional anxiety, but I assured him, with vivid mental images of books piled on the floors and desks of Offices I Have Known, that I did know how it is. "Well, we didn't want to rummage through all his things, so I must console you again," concluded the attendant with some relief. When the mysterious and venerable scholar himself reappeared, he turned out to be the retired specialist on Cistercians to whom one of the Darmstadt archivists had introduced me after finding himself unearthing 13th-century Cistercian charters for two people at once. He inquired with dignity what I did; I explained, and mentioned that we'd met… "Oh yes, now I remember; you're from America, or something like that." That's the one. The composite manuscript I eventually got my hands on contained several wills giving things to lepers, and evidence of one leper hospital itself being used as a place of judgment. Which, all in all, isn't a bad result for a day's work.
I found the man charged with overseeing the reading room under siege. He was speaking on the telephone with the careful, exasperated enunciation of someone who has been asked a painfully obvious question for the sixth time. Then I fetched up behind the sign saying "Please Announce Yourself," doubtless with the gleam in my eye of one who is bent on finding thirteenth-century papal letters no matter how deeply hidden in a catalog database. Behind me came an old man of choleric complexion, leaning on a walker, with a mercilessly accurate crease in his trousers and an intimidated carnation in his buttonhole. This formidable personage, with an angora-sweater-clad assistant in his wake, began by clearing his throat, and was positively huffing within two minutes, rounding me to get a better angle from which to glint purposefully at the man who was spelling things out on the phone and speaking in half-sentences which began "Yes, if you'd--" The intimidator of carnations and archivists turned out to have an idiosyncratic system of noting down signatures (there is an automated system for ordering things via the reading room's computer terminals, but the beleaguered Lesesaalaufsicht tactfully refrained from mentioning this.) I had sort of stared at the ceiling in a self-effacing manner to indicate that I would not complicate all our lives by insisting on priority over the man and his factotum. I was rewarded not only by the Lesesaalaufsicht's look of gratitude, but by the fact that he and two other attendants of the reading room threw themselves wholeheartedly into my mission of finding things, which turned out to be beset with complications of the filing system of generations.
While I was fiddling about with the database (so strictly categorized that it can conceal things; I recently discovered a chartulary of my Cistercian nuns filed under "account books" rather than their house) the signature I'd called up appeared in the form of an envelope of microfiches. If the papal letter I was looking for was in there, it was well-concealed in a 16th-century set of accounts. Deciphering 16th-century handwriting on microfiche is not something I'm good at, but I think what I need to do is return to the footnote where I found the reference. Then there was the codex that had been away for restoration the last time I was there; the nice Lesesaalaufsicht had said that, when the appropriate colleague came in, he'd ask about pulling it out for me just for a bit. Now he appeared with another microfiche envelope: they hadn't tracked down the restorer yet, but if this would work… I took it with thanks, and paged through the fiches which supposedly contained 4 codices. What they had was an Oculus Memoriae of one of the area's oldest and largest Cistercian houses: very nice too, but not what I was looking for. I explained this to another archive employee, who verified my reports, muttering under his breath about medieval handwriting, and then reinitiated the hunt for the manuscript itself. While I was making the most of the printed sources in the on-site library, the third of my champions for the day appeared again: the manuscript had been given temporarily to yet another colleague of the archive: "Now he is an older gentleman, and appears to have just stepped out for an hour unexpectedly," I was told. "We did look in his office, but it… I don't know, perhaps you know how it is with some scholars' offices…?" I suppressed a grin, as I thought this might seem to make light of his earnest professional anxiety, but I assured him, with vivid mental images of books piled on the floors and desks of Offices I Have Known, that I did know how it is. "Well, we didn't want to rummage through all his things, so I must console you again," concluded the attendant with some relief. When the mysterious and venerable scholar himself reappeared, he turned out to be the retired specialist on Cistercians to whom one of the Darmstadt archivists had introduced me after finding himself unearthing 13th-century Cistercian charters for two people at once. He inquired with dignity what I did; I explained, and mentioned that we'd met… "Oh yes, now I remember; you're from America, or something like that." That's the one. The composite manuscript I eventually got my hands on contained several wills giving things to lepers, and evidence of one leper hospital itself being used as a place of judgment. Which, all in all, isn't a bad result for a day's work.
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