Provenance Research at a Musicological Library
The library of the Cologne Musicological Institute was first built up in 1920 by the musicologist Ernst Bücken (1884-1949). However, the subsequent directors of the institute, Theodor Kroyer (1932-1938) and Karl Gustav Fellerer (1939-1970), were decisive for the expansion of the collection in the 1930s and early 1940s. A research project focused on the institute's collection of musical instruments has already documented that Fellerer not only worked closely with the head of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) for a long time, but also was personally involved in ERR missions on a number of occasions. At the same time, the origin of numerous, possibly valuable volumes in the institute's library was unclear, so that further research seemed urgently needed. The initial point for the two-year research project, funded by the German Lost Art Foundation, was the rara collection in the institute's library. The find of the institute's account books, which document the period 1932-1945, offered a promising starting point for identifying additions that took place during the Nazi era and researching their provenances.
The aims of the project were, on the one hand, a systematic examination of the holdings mentioned and the identification and targeted research of critical accesses from the period 1933-1945. In addition, the institute's staff at that time and their diverse interdependencies in the structures of the university and the scientific community, the city, the state, the NSDAP and cultural life were the focus of interest. As part of the project work carried out from 2021 to 2023, the entire rara inventory of the institute library was checked by means of object autopsies and the knowledge gained in this way was compared with the account books and other relevant sources. In this way, numerous entrances and various access routes could be identified in the period 1933-1945. In addition, important insights into work structures and processes in connection with the institute's library were gained through extensive research on the people working in the Musicological Institute during the period in question. In particular, Karl Gustav Fellerer's involvement with the ERR/Sonderstab Musik obviously played an important role in connection with the expansion of the Cologne Institute's library. The account books also offered approaches for researching business relationships that the institute maintained with book and music shops, antiquarian book shops and private individuals and their backgrounds.
The research results and existing research desiderata are presented in a detailed project report and published in the Proveana research database. The identified library holdings suspected of being Nazi-looted items were documented in the Lost Art database and, as far as possible, provenance information was added to the electronic documentation systems used by the institute library.