CSMC Newsletter

To make the undertexts on palimpsests legible, 19th-century scholars used chemicals that severely damaged the valuable manuscripts. ‘Palimpsests in Danger: Recovering Information from Chemically Treated Manuscripts’, a pilot study managed by the UCLA Library, the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library (EMEL), and the Fondazione Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona, attempts to figure out if and how the texts on these palimpsests can be restored. In order to do so, imaging experts from Europe and the US have been invited to apply different methods on the material. Among them are members of the CSMC’s Mobile Lab who have a long track record of successfully recovering damaged or erased writing using multispectral imaging.

The medievalist Julia Bruch from the University of Cologne has recently taken up the guest professorship for ‘Women in Manuscript Cultures’ at the CSMC. Her research interests include account books and craftsmen’s chronicles from the 15th and 16th centuries. During her guest professorship, she will focus on the question of how manuscripts by female scribes from this period differ from those produced by men, as she explains in an interview on our website. On 7 December at 6:15 pm, she will present issues from her current research in her public lecture on ‘Writing Women. Gender and Class in 15th- and 16th-Century German-Language Songs, Chronicles and Convent Books’.

For half a century, Louise Japha, an internationally renowned composer and pianist, kept an album with autograph entries of compositions by composers of her time, among them Johannes Brahms. Two lecture recitals in Freiburg and Emmendingen, jointly organised by Janine Droese and the descendants of Louise Japha, brought this little-known chapter of 19th-century music to life. The concerts took place on 14 and 15 October. A recording will be available on our website soon.

Nepal is home to exceptionally diverse manuscript collections, both in terms of scripts and languages as well as materials used. The new episode of Bidur Bhattarai’s video series ‘Written Artefacts of Nepal: Preservation and Documentation’ presents the preservation measures that have been undertaken for a Nepalese Buddhist manuscript that was produced in 1657 CE. It was written on nīlapatra (‘black paper’), largely in Rañjanā script with ‘gold-like’ ink. All episodes of the series are available on our website. 

With the beginning of the winter semester, a new cohort of students has started studying the MA programme ‘Manuscript Cultures’ at the Graduate School of CSMC. The new cohort is made up of 19 students from all around the world, joining us from China, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Germany, India, Iran, Mexico, and the US. Their academic backgrounds are equally diverse and include subjects such as Art History, Chemistry, History & Journalism, Restoration of Movable Property, and Philosophy, among many others.

The internationally renowned researcher and advisor in the field of Critical Cultural Heritage, René Teijgeler, who passed away in February 2023, has bequeathed part of his large library to the CSMC. The donation comprises a total of around 500 items. Among them are numerous rare books, journals, and old catalogues whose thematic focus is on the history of books and paper. Teijgeler initiated numerous projects for the preservation of cultural heritage, initially primarily in Asia. Among many other things, he also worked as a specialist in the protection of cultural heritage for the Dutch military during the war in Iraq and served as a senior advisor at the American Embassy in Baghdad. In 2013, he co-founded the NGO Heritage for Peace.

Malachi Beit-Arié, one of the world’s foremost manuscript scholars specialising in Hebrew manuscript culture, has passed away in Tel-Aviv on 17 October 2023. He has been closely associated with the CSMC for many years, coming regularly to Hamburg with his wife and research partner Nurit Pasternak. His scholarly achievements ‘are of such paramount importance for the humanities in general that they can be regarded as basis of a new discipline’, Irina Wandrey writes in her obituary.

The artist Philip Loersch is the new Artist in Residence at the CSMC. In our interview, he talks about how he developed the idea to draw portraits of pages, why old encyclopaedias inspire him, and what he wants to experiment with during his time at the Cluster.