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Library Collections

At the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center or Collections Depository Library (CDL) (UT's Rare Books and Special Collections Libraries)

Book Collections

  • German Plays Collection (HRC)
  • Professor Richard Alewyn German Collection (uncatalogued)
    • Nearly 200 German books of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.  Short-title list available in HRC reading room.
  • Argosy German Collection (CDL)
  • Eric Auerbach Collection (CDL)
    • Approximately 1,600 titles of Romance Language literature and general reference books in German, English, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish. Focuses on the Middle Ages.  From the library of Eric Auerbach, professor of Romance languages at Yale University  and author of Mimesis. Short-title list available in HRC reading room.
  • Cobet Collection (CDL)
    • A collection of all the books in humanities and the social sciences printed in Germany in the decade after the close of WW II. Named after its collector, Christoph Cobet.
  • German Dialect Collection
    • 650 books in the various German dialects. A card-file description available in HRC reading room.
  • German Drama Collection (Theater Arts Library)
    • Dramatic material from the collection of Dr. Conrad Seidemann, director of the Bush Temple Theatre Company of Chicago. The collection includes 500 plays plus poems and pamphlets, sheet music, operettas, and a few vaudeville sketches; 150 books, programs, contracts, limited correspondence, advertisements, and newspaper clippings.
  • Hermann Hesse Collection (catalogued)
    • Over 250 books, pamphlets, offprints, translations, and periodical appearances by Hesse and books about him.
  • Emanuel Swedenborg Collection (uncatalogued)
    • Approximately 350 volumes of books by and about Swedenborg.
  • History of Science Collection
  • Baron Tauchnitz Collection
    • This collection contains 1,700 English-language volumes published by the Leipzig firm of Tauchnitz and is the third largest institutional collection of Tauchnitz publication in this country. See also Albatross Verlag below.
  • Gustav Wolf Library (uncatalogued)
    • Gustav Wolf (1887-1947) was an artist exiled to the US in 1938 from Nazi Germany. 700 volumes and 200 periodicals and pamphlets from Wolf's personal library; most are in German.

Manuscript Collections

  • Albatross Verlag
    • A substantial collection of contracts, papers, and letters documenting the later history of the late J. Holroyd-Reece's international publishing enterprise, which first outrivaled and finally absorbed the firm of Tauchnitz. The collection covers the years 1930 to 1955. See also Baron Tauchnitz above.
  • Hermann Charles Bosman (1905-1951)
    • Manuscripts of several original works in and translations into or from Afrikaans.
  • Cookbook (1805)
    • "Ein Koch Buch für mich." Autograph manuscript cookbook (German).
  • Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
  • Isaac Bashevis Singer
  • Sigmund Freud
  • Michael Hamburger (English poet and translator)
    • Manuscripts relating to Hamburger's studies and translations of Hugo von Hofmannsthal; manuscript of From Prophecy to Exorcism; proofs of translations of Büchner, Celan, Goethe, Grass, Hofmannsthal, Hölderlin, and Sachs; correspondence.
  • Georg Kaiser (1878-1944)
    • Kaiser was, with Ernst Toller (see below), the leading dramatist of German expressionism. Xerox copies of Kaiser's manuscripts and critical works on him from the Berlin archive.
  • Johann Anton Konrad
    • "Geheimnisse oder Allerhand Medicinisch, Magische, Speagijrische Sympath . . . und Antipathetische Kunst-Stücke" (1795): a manuscript of home and farm remedies and charms from a Texas Ranch. Gift of Mr. Hilton Elstner.
  • Mindsheim, Germany
    • Official documents of this town's records dating from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.
  • Nazi Economic and Banking Officials' Documents, 1936-1944
    • Letters to Rudolf Brinkmann (224), Carl Goetz (84), Karl Rasche (9); a 1939 diplomatic memo by Alfred Rosenberg about a visit of Lord and Lady Kimsley; an army promotion list and a professorial appointment document signed by Adolf Hitler. Fuller description available in fifth-floor reading room.
  • Alfred Neumann (b. 1895; historical novelist and poet)
    • Manuscripts of his Narrenspiegel, The Brothers, and 19 shorter pieces (uncatalogued).
  • P.E.N. Club
    • The archives of this international writers' organization contains correspondence between the Club's London office and the German chapter of P.E.N. in Berlin. Other correspondence with individual German writers is housed in the collection, as well.
  • Pre-1700 Manuscripts
    • #94: Nuremburg History -- "Buch der Uhrlaten Atten undt Neuren Rathseligen Geschlecht der loblichen Reichstatt Nürnberg" (210 pp., c. 1665). This historical account of the principle citizens and families of the city begins with a homily on the duties of citizenship, followed by a description of the origin of all families collectively with the flood, and narrowing to the families of Nuremburg.
    • -Several others of German origin and/or subject, most notably # 41, "Andachtsbuch."
  • Franz Schoenberner (1892-1970, editor and author)
    • An editor of Jugend in Munich in the later 1920s, and the last pre-Nazi editor of the anti-Nazi Simplicissimus, a German satirical magazine. He emigrated to France in 1933, and to the US in 1941. His autobiography appeared in three volumes: Confessions of a European Intellectual, The Inside Story of an Outsider, and You Still Have Your Hearing: Excursions from Mobility. The HRHRC first purchased from F.S. a small group of letters from D.H. Lawrence; later, it acquired letter to F.S. from Henri Barbusse (2), Andre Gide (9), Georg Grosz (1), Heinrich Mann (2), Thomas Mann (2), Romain Rolland (2), Upton Sinclair (7), Stefan Zweig (4), and more than 100 from Thomas Theodor Heine. Most of the letters date from the 1930s and 1940s.
  • Ernst Toller (German poet, playwright, and political agitator, 1893-1939)
    • A small archive of manuscript works and correspondence by and relating to Toller (see Georg Kaiser).
  • Franz Werfel (Expressionist poet, dramatist, and novelist, 1890-1945)
    • Autograph manuscript (in three notebooks) of Der veruntreute Himmel (Embezzled Heaven). Correspondence in the PEN Club archive and Artine Artinian Collection.
  • Stefan Zweig (Austrian Writer, 1881-1942)
    • Typed manuscripts of Zweig's autobiographical sketch for George Schreiber's Self-Portraits; 34 letters from Zweig to various recipients, including Alfred A. Knopf, Ludwig Lewisohn, and the PEN Club.
  • Christopher Middleton
    • Manuscripts of his translations of:
      • Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin and Eduard Mörike (1970-72)(holograph, typescript of introduction, carbon typescript, galley proofs, page proofs, correspondence)
      • Elias Canetti's Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice (holograph, Xerox of typescript, page proofs) (ca. 1974)
    • Manuscripts of Christopher Middleton's poems:
      • 32 poems in Torse 3 (London: Longmans; New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1962)
      • Nonsequences (1961-64)
      • Our Flowers and Nice Bones
      • Penny Pastorals
  • Elizabet Ney (sculptor)
    • Archives of the Ney Museum (Austin, TX).
  • Richard Reich
    • Mimeo script of his adaptation of Georg Büchner's Woyzeck, 1964.
  • Max Reinhart
    • His copies of William Shakespeare's Macbeth and Georg Bernard Shaw's St. Joan, in German, interleaved with detailed manuscript production notes and sketches. the Macbeth notebook is dated "Berlin, 24 Jan. 1916"; the St. Joan notebook is dated "Salzburg, 5. Sept. [19]24."
  • Rainer Maria Rilke
    • 20 autograph letters, signed; 1 autograph postcard from Rilke to Gräfin Margot Sizzo. Approximately 152 pp. (uncatalogued), 1921-1926.
  • Wilhelm von Scholz (b. 1874; poet and dramatist)
    • Carbon typescript of "Das Zaubermärchen": biographical essays about Scholz by Lee M. Hollander; typed letter, signed by Scholz to Hollander (1947 November 4), photographs.
  • Johann Strauss, Jr.
    • Printed libretto for Die Fledermaus with director's marking of Jos. Mattes and signed inscription of Gustav Levy.
  • August Strindberg (1849-1912)
    • Erik XIV, typescript with autograph corrections.
    • Legendes, illuminated autograph manuscript in French and Swedish; i + 250, 178 pp.; no date (watermark 1895)
    • • autograph letter, signed, from August Strindberg to Albert Sacine, 1893 September 21.
  • Adolf Wohlbruck (Viennese-born actor; 1900-1967)
    • An archive of books and manuscripts relating to the late career of Wolbruck (better known internationally as "Anton Walbrook"). The archive consists of 21 editions of fourteen plays (13 of them acting copies marked by Walbrook to record cuts, corrections, personal notes, cast lists and other prompt indications); and several typescript monologues (Pedro Bloch's Euridykes Haende, Wedekind's Rabbi Ezra, and Arthur Schnitzler's Exzentrik).
  • Archives on East German Sports Management
  • Erzherzog Maximillianvon Habsburg-Lothringen
    • An archive of the letters written by the Archduke Maximillian during his time in Mexico as putative Emperor
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