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As some of you obviously noticed, there was a break in publishing new posts on the Salon Jewish Studies Blog during the last months. The reason is, that we are working on a new project, called Jewlib - Digital Archive Library of Primary Sources for Jewish History and Cultures. This project is a work in progress, like the Salon Jewish Studies. The aims of the project are (among others):

Help through the cultural heritage protection organization „Blue Shield“
A bus full of archivists and conservators left Den Haag on April 26, 2009 morning to support the recovery and rescue of material at the collapsed Cologne Historical Archive (CHA). 75 experts from France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and America will help for a week.
On May 5, 2009 it was reported that in four days nearly 2 (shelf)km were processed. Besides compliments, some supportes at the scene also express critical points (extract from Archivalia May 4, 2009):

"I noticed that German archivists see their job mainly as administration not tradition (store and prepare heritage)…
Double or not relevant material is not separated from the inventory, so the collections are unorganized and confus. In Germany not much of the material is assorted and rearranged, many documents are in original packages (as they came) and rivets and clips are not removed systematically.
The German colleagues did a good job on organizing transport and accommodation for 80 people from abroad.
More supervision during the work was needed. Some of the volunteers had no experiences in archival work and were confused by the registration of the documents. Nobody checked our work, it seemed that the organization focuses on speed. This was successful in any case, in four days, nearly 2 (shelf)km processed!"

Archival collections recoverd from the intact archive cellar on April 21, 2009
The fire department recovered 850 (shelf) m of inventory from the intact archive cellar of the collapsed building – mostly newspapers but also parts of private papers and collections.
Among others the personal collections of Wallraf and Schneider-Wessling were recovered intactly from archive cellar:
" .... The rescued material is in proper condition, the speaker of the fire department Daniel Leupold announced. The ceiling of the room was able to bear the weight while other parts collapsed. The fire department recovered the material through the back of the building with the help of a seven meter ramp and rolling containers.
The complete collections of the architect Prof. Erich Schneider-Wessling and the author Günter Wallraf were stored in this cellar. Wallraf received the message that his 200 boxes with material were recovered while arguing with lawyers. ‘Today, I celebrate my second birthday’ Wallraf announced. Wallraf calls it lucky because he just needed a part of his material for a current project.
Schneider-Wessling is also happy that his work from the last 50 years is accessible again, originals of plans, competition papers, sketches and much more…” (Koelner Stadtanzeiger, April 21, 2009)

Former Summaries
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XIV, Tuesday April 20th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XIII, April 2nd 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XII, March 24th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XI, March 21th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse X, March 20th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse IX, March 18th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse VIII, March 17th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse VII, March 15th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse VI, March 13th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse V, March 12th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse IV, March 11th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse III, March 10th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse II, March 09th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse I, March 08 th 2009

SEE ALSO
COLOGNE HISTORICAL ARCHIVE - POSSIBILITIES TO HELP
International Blue Shield Mission

GERMAN
http://archiv.twoday.net/topics/Kommunalarchive

Solidarity group on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=58486607084

"Today, on April 21, 2009, the World Digital Library, one of the most significant projects refering to digital primary sources on different cultures across the world, was launched.

The mission:

"The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.

The principal objectives of the WDL are to:

Promote international and intercultural understanding;
Expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet;
Provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences;
Build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and between countries."

"Tough economic times and multimillion-dollar debt might force Hebrew Union College, the nation’s oldest Jewish educational institution, to shut down its Clifton campus.
Advertisement
The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is facing an $8 million debt – in part because of flat fundraising, pension liabilities, and endowment and other revenue declines that have hit the institute harder than at any other time in its history, Rabbi David Ellenson, the college-institute’s president, told stakeholders in an e-mail.
'I wish with all my heart and soul that this were not so,” he wrote. “Yet, all the wishing in the world cannot alter the reality we face.'
HUC has raised the possibility of closing two of its three U.S. campuses. The others are in New York and Los Angeles.
Rabbi Gerry Walter, a 1974 graduate of the Clifton Avenue campus, said closing his alma mater would be a huge blow to American Jewry.
'This is the heart of Reform Judaism and we very much want to see it remain here,' said Walter, rabbi at Temple Sholom in Amberley Village.
Rabbi Isaac M. Wise founded the college in 1875, hoping to guarantee the survival of Judaism in America. The rabbinical school moved to its current campus in 1912, becoming an institution in Clifton.
The Klau Library and the American Jewish Archives – a massive collection of history that local supporters say is matched only by resources in Israel – hold a physical connection to Jewish history.
The Jacob Rader Marcus Center houses the archives, which boast more than 15 million documents on Jewish life. The nearby library holds hundreds of thousands of volumes. That collection includes everything from rare books and ancient scrolls to Bibles, cookbooks and Jewish songs.
'There’s no other place like it in the world,Ä said Brian Jaffee, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council in Cincinnati. 'There are books and other materials that were rescued from Nazi Europe. As someone who cares very much about our Jewish story, it’s impossible for me to imagine the library and archives not being here in Cincinnati.'
A group of faculty, alumni and other supporters of the Clifton campus are mobilizing an effort to keep the school open.
Leaders of the campus in Los Angeles are rallying to keep their branch afloat, too.
They argued, in a Los Angeles Times story, that the best arrangement would be to have campuses on each coast.
They pointed to an agreement with the University of Southern California that pays the institute $1.9 million to teach Jewish studies courses. They also alluded to the possibility of USC buying or leasing some of the institute’s property.
'I still think a presence in Los Angeles is essential to the survival and growth of the [Reform] movement in America because L.A. is the second-largest center of Jewish life demographically … and because it’s emerging as an important laboratory of Jewish innovation,' David N. Myers, head of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies, told the Times.
Other reorganization efforts might allow more than one campus to remain open. A fourth campus in Jerusalem has not been mentioned in the potential closure talks.
The scenarios will be discussed in more detail when the Board of Governors meets next month in New York. A final decision will be made during a special June 23 board meeting.
Staff writer Eric Bradley contributed to this report." (via Cincinnati.com)

Invitation for all donors of private collections (KStA via Archivalia)
The City of Cologne will invite all donors of private collections and depositaries to the Piazetta in the City Hall on May 11th. The head of the department, Gisela Fleckenstein explains the late date with the task to organize 10 (shelf) m of contracts to find out what the archive holds (held) and who are the depositaries. Fleckenstein says: „In case we forgot somebody, please feel invited.“

Recovery process already finished at the end of May? (KstA via Archivalia)
After a short Easter break, the fire department Cologne and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief continue their work at the collapsed building in Severinstraße. This week the volunteer fire department Aachen is helping. The mountain of rubble decreases every day. “It could be possible that we will be finished at the end of May” notes the speaker of the fire department, Günter Weber, but he also limits: “We do not know exactly how further it goes into the depth.”
A special driller, that transports rock specimens from up to 50 m depth, was used to examine the condition of the ground. “This way you can find out if there is more rubble in the depth“, reports Weber. In the meantime, exvacators pull down the backside of the former CHA building, remains of the reading room and the offices.
Nearly half of the former 30 (shelf) km have been recovered in different conditions. “It will take years to restore and sort the documents“, said Gisela Fleckenstein. “Die several papers and collections are one big mess.“

What do we learn from Cologne Historical Archive's collapse? (Die Welt via Archivalia)
" ..... that we must deal with our history more careful. This is not about a building in Cologne that collapsed but about our historical memory. Therefore this collapse is a societal problem, in which the politics has got more involved. Knowledge and concepts exist, only financing is missing. In general, we need a wider awareness of our archives, for they store our history and make it researchable…” , said Jochen Hermel (Institute for History, University of Bonn; Hermel works on his PhD thesis about integration of migrants to the City of Cologne in the 16th and the beginning 17th century)

Former Summaries
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XIV, Tuesday March 20th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XIII, April 2nd 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XII, March 24th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse XI, March 21th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse X, March 20th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse IX, March 18th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse VIII, March 17th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse VII, March 15th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse VI, March 13th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse V, March 12th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse IV, March 11th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse III, March 10th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse II, March 09th 2009
Summary Cologne Archive's collapse I, March 08 th 2009

SEE ALSO
COLOGNE HISTORICAL ARCHIVE - POSSIBILITIES TO HELP
International Blue Shield Mission

GERMAN
http://archiv.twoday.net/topics/Kommunalarchive

Solidarity group on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=58486607084

From May 2009 two titles edited by the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute (Leipzig) will be published online:

1) Die rheinischen Juden im Mittelalter
2) Jüdische Friedhöfe in Deutschland – Eine Einführung für Lehrer und Schüler

For more information on the titles see section Mitteilungen of Kalonymos I, 2009

International Blue Shield mission: 27 APRIL TO 1 MAY
Wednesday, 15 April 2009 09:09
http://www.ancbs.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98:international-blue-shield-mission-27-april-to-1-may-&catid=14:past-news&Itemid=29

EVERY ARCHIVIST, RESTORER OR HERITAGE PROFESSIONAL WHO IS WILLING TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS MISSION IS KINDLY BUT URGENTLY REQUESTED TO RESPOND AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE BY SENDING A REPLY EMAIL TO CONTACT@ANCBS.ORGThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it WITH THE CONTACT DETAILS REQUESTED BELOW.

International Blue Shield mission: 27 APRIL TO 1 MAY

Dear Colleagues,

The new Blue Shield international coordination center in The Hague received a request for support from Cologne, which we distributed among our relations and Dutch Archive institutes and professionals. We have received many responses from those who want to help.

Together with the National Archive and the Dutch Branch organization of Archive institutes (BRAIN) we made an inventory of people and institutes willing to help. Their offers keep coming in. We have received many responses from The Netherlands, but also from Belgium, France, the United States and the Czech Republic. In the first week of April a delegation went to Cologne to see how best to coordinate offers of assistance. The staff in Cologne gave us a warm welcome and we obtained detailed information and a thorough impression of the work that is in progress.

The delegation was very much impressed by the work that has been done so far. The process of searching and finding the material is taking place under extremely dangerous and difficult circumstances. It is therefore a tremendous achievement to have made such progress. It has not only surprised us it has also surprised the staff and volunteers of the Archive. The planning has been revised several times and has greatly progressed. The prognoses are that the first phase of the recovery process (separating material, storage, registration, first aid to the objects like cleaning and drying or preparing for further treatment) needs one more month, so this will end even before the summer holidays.

The delegation was also very impressed by the determination and the motivation of everyone at work. After a month of stress and extremely long working hours spirits seem unbroken, though the fatigue is showing. Firemen are still the only ones working on the slope, because of the dangerous conditions. They have a whole team working day in day out and they will stay until the slope is gone.

A coordinated mission is needed as soon as possible. It will be most helpful in this first phase of the recovery process if several teams work at the same time and on the same location. In accordance with the staff in Cologne we therefore decided to reschule schedule our mission for 27 APRIL TO 1 MAY. A coordinated mission will save time and energy for the Archive staff,who must make the necessary arrangements for each individual volunteer, including booking the accommodation, introduction, transport, etc.)

To prepare the mission we needed some time. We are fully aware that all professionals who indicated their willingness to help will need some time too and may have difficulty matching a busy agenda with this unforeseen early departure. Because of this we hereby call on every professional, whether they have already indicated their interest to join us or are deciding to do so, to support our hardworking colleagues of Cologne and make this first international Blue Shield mission a success.

International Blue Shield mission: 27 APRIL TO 1 MAYApplication:

send a completed (see below) reply email to the Blue Shield coordination Center in The Hague: contact@ancbs.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Date: Monday, 27 April to 1 May (Note: 1 May is a holiday).

Tasks: Sorting material (rubble/collection), select dry and wet materials, clean, register, dry partly wet material and prepare other material for freeze-drying at other locations.

Transport to Cologne: A touring car will depart from The Hague on Monday morning, the 27th of April and will return on the 1st of May. All participants are welcome to join us, since there will be no charge for this. This service will not be beneficial to all participants (f.e. from other countries), whom we regret must arrange and pay for their own transport.

Transport within Cologne: Transport by shuttle bus from accomodation to the work locations will be arranged free of charge by the city of Cologne.

Accommodation: The city of Cologne offers all volunteers free accomodation, food, and beverages. May 1st is a holiday for the Archive. The touring car will return to The Hague in the afternoon to enable participants to visit Cologne.

Insurance: The city of Cologne has provided the Archive with insurance for all volunteers.More information: Please visit our website http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.ancbs.org or attend our presentations (see below), in which we will provide you with more info about the actual situation in Cologne, the working conditions, tasks and facilities for the volunteers.

Monday April 20: The Hague, Nationaal Archief, Auditorium, 16.00 - 17.30 hrs.

Tuesday April 21: Nijmegen, Regionaal Archief Nijmegen,16.00 -17.30 hrs.

Saturday April 25 :s Hertogenbosch, Restauratiebeurs, 12.00 -13.00 hrs. the big theater----------------------------------------------------------------
Please fill in and send by return email to contact@ancbs.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
YES / NO / NOT SURE Participate in the Blue Shield mission of Monday 27 April to Friday 1 May.
YES / NO Participate in the Blue Shield meeting at the Nationaal Archief
YES / NO Participate in the Blue Shield meeting at the Regionaal Archief Nijmegen
YES / NO Participate in the Blue Shield meeting at the Restauration fair in 's HertogenboschInstitution
Institution (Please send only one application form with all the names, if several members of your institute will join the mission):

.....................................................................
(Name(s): 1. .............................
2.................................
Etc. ...........................
Contact details: .........................................................................................................

Phonenumber (06 / direct).........................................
EACH PERSON OR INSTITUTE WHICH HAS ALREADY INDICATED THEIR WILLINGNESS TO HELP BUT IS UNABLE TO JOIN OUR MISSION DURING THIS PARTICULAR PERIOD IS ALSO KINDLY REQUESTED TO FILL IN THE NEW INFORMATION AND RETURN THIS EMAIL.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


On behalf of BRAIN, Nationaal Archief en Blue Shield,
Marjan Otter
Secretary ANCBS
00 31 (0)20 4632342

Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield (ANCBS)
Postal address:
ANCBS Office,
Laan van Meerdervoort 70
2517 AN The Hague,
The Netherlands
E mail address: contact@ancbs.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Web address: http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http://www.ancbs.org
Telephone: 00 31 (0)70-3466161
Fax: 00 31 (0)70-3467232

The German newspaper Spiegel published in its online version the brief article Experte fordert Ende der Raubkunst Debatte [expert ask to end the debate about looted art] today. It includes information based on an interview with the long-standing curator of the Royal Academy of Arts (London) - Sir Norman Rosenthal:

"'Unfassbar Furchtbares ist geschehen. Wie wollen Sie das vergeben? Indem Sie einen Tizian einpacken?', sagte der langjähriger Kurator der Royal Academy in London im SPIEGEL-Interview. Er verstehe, dass sich viele Museumsdirektoren nicht nur in Deutschland gegen Restitutionsansprüche wehren, sagte Rosenthal, der selbst aus einer jüdischen Emigrantenfamilie stammt. Seine Mutter flüchtete aus Deutschland. [...] Bei der ganzen Diskussion müsse man im Auge behalten, dass der Kunstmarkt in den vergangenen Jahren explodiert sei und Begehrlichkeiten geweckt habe. "Die Leute, die da mitverdienen wollen, erinnern mich an Aasgeier", sagte er dem SPIEGEL. Oft genug werde ein Bild sofort nach der Restitution veräußert, 'und so mancher Anwalt erhält 50 Prozent des Erlöses'."

Rosenthal, one of the main critics of restitution processes was also cited in the online version of the NEW YORK Jewish Week on April 1, 2009:

"If we were still in 1950 and the people who owned the Manet or the Monet were still alive, then it would surely be correct to give these paintings back [...] but not now and not to grandchildren and great-grandchildren"


For more information on looted art

http://www.lootedart.com/ (site contains a information database on looted art from forty nine countries and a object database with which contains details of 25,000 objects)

http://www.beutekunst.de/ (pilot project, at the moment information on looted art in Saxony-Anhalt)

Operation Head Quarter and Center for Rescue at the scene (Erstversorgungszentrum) report success (Press service city of Cologne March 31, 2009 via Archivalia)
Four weeks after intensive recovery and rescue work at the collapsed Cologne Historical Archive (CHA), a measurable success shows.
There will be more documents rescued from the rubble than assumed before. The fire department carted off 5.224 tons of rubble on 371 truck loadings yesterday. The staff of the CHA (Erstversorgungszentrum) reported that seven (shelf) km of material had been recovered at the scene.
Together with three (shelf) km stored in the cellar of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium and one (shelf) km stored in the not collapsed part of the cellar, 11 (shelf) km archive inventory survived so far. Before the collapse, the CHA building hosted 30 (shelf) km material.
The recovered material is in most different condition. Priority is the restoring „first aid“ and the appropriate storage until the recovery work is finished. Many volunteers from all over Germany did and still do valuable work on this which will be needed in the following months.
The City of Cologne considers preferred experts like archivists, conservators and related fields. An appropriate restoration can only be done in future times.

(clipping from Bransten family scrapbook, Judah L Magnes Museum collections)

"The Judah L. Magnes museum is a museum of art and history focused on the Jewish experience located in Berkeley, California. Since late 2007 the museum has been posting their digital assets both on their website and on their Flickr account. On Flickr, all of the high resolution images are licensed under our [Creative Commons] Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. [...]

More information on Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org

"The Israel Antiquities Authority says archaeologists have discovered a Byzantine-era bathhouse in the south of the country dating back more than 1,500 years.
Archaeologist Gregory Serai headed the excavation and says the impressive size of bathhouse, 20 by 20 yards (meters), showed the area, between Beersheba and Gaza, was more heavily populated in the Byzantine era then previously thought.
Serai added in Wednesday’s statement that the evidence found at the site shows “the villagers based their economy on wine production.”
The statement said the bathhouse was destroyed in a cave-in and the site became a garbage dump.
The dig precedes work to lay a railroad track through the area." (Jewish Breaking News - Private Blog By A Few Jewish News Reporters via http://twitter.com/JBN)

1,045 meters of recovered inventory from the Cologne Historical Archive's collection (CHA) (Koelner Stadtanzeiger March 20, 2009 via Archivalia)
1045 meters of the (former) 27 shelf-kilometers Cologne Historical Archive inventory have been recovered. It seems little but means in figures that 1000 recovery tubs (each 1 m material), 20 lattice boxes (for wet material, each 1,5 m material) have been filled with findings from the rubble.
Among this were two Albertus Magnus handwritings, four of the Weinsberg books (16th century) und parts of the 550 Schreinsbücher (13th-18th century) also parts of the Ratsprotokolle (constitution and administration documents of the Imperial City from the Middle Ages until Early Modern Times). 50 outsized deeds, valuable individual pieces of the Haupturkundenarchiv (central deeds archive) were also recovered.
The discovered documents of modern times are mostly parts and pieces: personal papers of the former Lord Mayor Ernst Schwering and the city treasurer Billstein, inventory of Lord Majors Cologne after 1945, City Archive Porz (postwar period) and pieces of postwar municipal documents.

"The sixth Early Modern Workshop will focus on the topic of “Reading across Cultures: The Jewish Book and Its Readers in the Early Modern Period.” The workshop will be held at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University from Sunday, August 23, 2009 and to Tuesday, August 25, 2009. The keynote speaker will be Professor Ann Blair (Harvard University).
The proposed workshop aims to understand more deeply the developments in reading within Jewish society, as well as the impact the Jewish book may have had on culture in early modern Europe among both Jews and Christians. Recent studies, mostly on France, England, and Italy, have focused on the people behind “the book” – not only the author, but also those involved in book production and distribution, as well as the readers. As Guiglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier have argued, the text is fixed, whereas reading is ephemeral and creative. This workshop will seek to open a discussion of the culture of reading in Jewish society, as well as of the reading of Jewish books in Christian society, during a period of rapid cultural transformation. It will bring existing scholarship on the history of reading in Christian Europe to bear on the subject of Jewish reading. For example, scholars in this realm have highlighted the importance of medieval monastic culture for the development of silent reading, which in the early modern period became normalized within a broader reading community. What were the different or parallel developments within Jewish society, with its very different institutions and conventions of learning? How did print and access to books affect readers? Did it facilitate new reading communities? Did it modify existing reading traditions? And did it affect the ways of reading? How did authorities seek to control or prevent access to new texts, and how did these measures affect readers?" (Early Modern Bulletin)

Addition Information via H-Judaic Digest: "Up to 5 graduate students will attend and receive a fellowship covering travel, accommodation, and
(kosher) meals. Candidates should send their C.V. and a short abstract (not longer than 2 pages) of the dissertation project to Magda Teter at mteter@wesleyan.edu by May 15, 2009. The decision will be made by May 31."

"Princeton University has placed a new digital library of 200 Islamic manuscripts online for scholars to consult and study. [...]
These manuscripts were selected from some 9,500 volumes of Islamic manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish and other languages of the Muslim world in the University Library's Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. Princeton's extraordinary holdings constitute the premier collection in the Western Hemisphere and among the finest in the world, according to Don Skemer, curator of manuscripts.
The digitized manuscripts date from the early centuries of Islam until the fall of the Ottoman Empire. They originated in all parts of the Islamic world, from Moorish Spain and northern Africa in the West, through the Middle East, and to India and Indonesia in the East. Subject coverage is fairly encyclopedic, including history, biography, philosophy and logic, theology (based both on the Quran and tradition), law and jurisprudence, language, literature, book arts and illustration, magic and occult sciences, astrology, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and other aspects of the spiritual and intellectual life of the Islamic world.
While the digital library emphasizes rare or unique texts of academic research interest, it also includes a selection of Persian illuminated manuscripts and Mughal miniatures, such as a magnificent 18th-century Indian album of miniatures and calligraphy.
Princeton expects to add more manuscripts to the digital library in the future, besides producing the online bibliographic descriptions." (News at Princeton via Archivesopen)

Some of you maybe noticed that we work on Salon Jewish Studies http://international-js.blogspot.com since a few days. After redesigning the layout, we plan to add a lot of new features and improvements on the structure of the whole directory. The working process will take min. 3 or 4 month. (hopefully)
If you have any questions on that, please feel free to contact us via email: info@elbogen.org.
Also use this email adress, if you want to get involved somehow in the whole project. We are looking forward to hearing from you.

yours

Frank

March 22, 2009

"The black hole of history", Die Sueddeutsche focuses in the article Das Schwarze Loch der Geschichte (March 14, 2009) on different personal perspectives relating to the Cologne archive collapse (via Archivalia):
Ten days ago on a sunny day, Cologne sunk in darkest night: 65000 deeds, 26 shelf-kilometers files, 500000 photos, 780 bequests/personal paper collections – 1200 years old memory of the city was buried under rubble in a few seconds. (…)
Hans Bender is one of the 780 donors of his personal papers. For many years, he published the probably most important postwar literature-journal “Akzente”, besides prose, poetry and own works. 27000 documents of him, including letter exchanges with the whole postwar authors that were a comment to the federal republican literature, were stored in this archive. (…)
Dominik Haffner is one of the Marburg referenda says, while putting shredded pieces of a 17th century handwriting away, he does not believe that even 20% will be rescued. (…)
He and his colleagues are not to look that the material closely, because they are working against time: As soon as the wet material reaches air (out of the rubble), it must be brought to the freezing storage room within 14 hours, otherwise mildew will develop. (…)
Eberhard Illner, for all his interlocutors the archive is not visible anymore, but the former head of department can walk through it in his imagination. During the talk, he repeats that the papers of Hans Meyers were on the 3rd floor and Günter Wands’ papers on the 5th floor in the back. Illner (now archivist in Wuppertal) had worked in CHA for 22 years, he established four of the six stores, during the talk he starts crying several times. Since the beginning of 2008, he had noticed and reported defects and disruptions at the building without be taken serious. He now is called a denigrator of the “archival guild”, because he pointed out his information to the public after the collapse and is alleged to have broken his official discretion.

Koelner Stadtanzeiger reports on action force at the scene on March 20, 2009 (via Archivalia)
For the first time, since the collapse of the archive building in Cologne (CHA) on March 3rd, the rescue teams of the firefighter department, the volunteer firefighters and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) will take a one day break on Sunday. The work will be continued on Monday at 7 a.m., said Daniel Leupold from the firefighter department. On today’s Saturday, 60 supporters – like all past days – will be working until the onset of dark around 7 p.m.
Strenuously, they pull files, deeds and other valuable subjects belonging to the CHA inventory out of the rubble. On Friday, the supporters found much material from the 20th century, under it comments on the German Empire Constitution (Deutsche Reichsverfassung) dated 1918. On Thursday, 14 truck loadings had been recovered. In the storage hall (Cologne outside district) where the loadings of rubble and material are brought to, dozens of supporters are searching for material that is in a restorable condition.
The action force at the collapsed building needs to work carefully to minimize the risk of injury which is very high, says Leupold. So far two men were hit by stones: One man of the THW had a concrete piece slid against his leg, he got outpatient treatment. A stone hit the shoulder of a firefighter but recovered quick and returned to work.

Over Thirty-five Passover Haggadot will be displayed , between March 21-April 15, 2009 at Kresge Art Museum. The exhibition The Story of Exodus: The Passover Haggadah shows artifacts from the Michigan State University (MSU) libaries special collections, which contain "450,000 printed works, numerous manuscript and archival collections, and an extensive collection of ephemera." (MSU Lib.) [...] "At the MSU Main Library’s Special Collections, historically important 20th century examples will be on view, ranging from consumer-product and feminist Haggadot to those from Israeli kibbutzim.
Related events are a discussion of Geraldine Brooks’ “The People of the Book” at 5:30 p.m. April 1, led by Marc Bernstein, Jewish Studies and College of Arts and Letters, and a gallery talk on collecting Jewish heritage and illustrated Haggadot at noon April 13, led by Constance Harris, author, collector and donor of Haggadot." (MSU News)