DACH

The Third Man, or the last post

This is not about Peter Mandelson and his memoirs; I wouldn’t dare to write about power games here, but since I mentioned it, I might as well plug the current major exhibition called Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art.

The reason for choosing this title is that I remembered an interesting line from The Third Man  (1949) in which Orson Welles says as a criminal on the run: In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock! 
If you’ve never seen the film, you can watch the extract here, or - if you have a valid reader pass - you can come and read the script, @ BL X.989/29277.

(Photo by iamaruntimeerror ; some rights reserved)

In my last post for this blog as German-Swiss curator, I do wonder what people think about Switzerland. Surely Welles was wrong - not least because the cuckoo clock was most probably first made in the Black Forest (you can follow that lead, if interested, by looking at: Kochmann, Karl. Black forest clockmaker and the cuckoo clock [1987 ed.] ([Concord, Calif.] : Antique Clocks Publishing, 1987.) , @ BL (B) PK 51). So the cuckoo clock is not the "only" invention of note from Switzerland (apart from 500 years of democracy). There are so many significant contributions from this country of the Alps that I could write a very long post here.

However, it is clear that for those who don’t know, say, Paul Klee, they will not be convinced that either he or Switzerland are important to this world. Therefore, to them, he would not feature as an innovative Swiss person. When I went to Bern last December (a short break whilst going to see family in Germany anyway; no worries, no public money was used for this), I went to the Zentrum Paul Klee. This Centre is in two ways extraordinary: a modern yet pleasant building which progressively combines exhibition, research and outreach in three seamlessly connected buildings, and a thorough as well as edutaining and scholarly engagement with Klee’s work. Some people might argue, but one could say that Klee was the third man (after Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc) in the almanac Der Blaue Reiter (for a pamphlet suggesting this, see BL MFE 48 *1741* 1.003.003 DSC).

Of course, you might say that modern art (or any art) is not an interest of yours; in this case, please go to Wikipedia’s list of famous Swiss people  and pick an area in which you have an expertise or interest. Roger Federer? Martina Hingis? Henri Nestlé? Ferdinand de Saussure?

However, famous Swiss men and women are only one side of this story. For some, the dominance of German and Austrian culture has led to belittling Switzerland as the "smaller German" brother (of course disregarding the rich contributions by French and Italian Eidgenossen). Let me blow a final fanfare for all-things Swiss. The last bugle call, at the last post.

[CG]

Remembrance of Bohemia past

I recently returned from a holiday in the beautiful region of the Czech Republic known as South Bohemia.

Back when I was a teenager, I liked to wind people up with my interest in the artist Egon Schiele, whose tortured representations of the human body in the throes of sex or death found him few friends in early twentieth century Austria either. When I mentioned to friends who know of my interest in him that I had visited a museum in Cesky Krumlov devoted to him, I was greeted with a few exclamations of surprise. "Really? I didn't know he was Czech?!" 

Of course, Schiele wasn't Czech; he was a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, born in Tulln near Vienna in 1890 to an ethnically Austrian father, and a mother who would probably have described herself as "Bohemian" (Böhmisch), and who came from the town then known as Krumau an der Moldau. This was Cesky Krumlov, today’s idyllic UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Czech Republic’s second biggest tourist attraction after Prague.  In Schiele’s day, it was almost 70% German-speaking, just one more stop on the network of railway lines that criss-crossed the vast Empire, covering territory that comprises the modern-day states of Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and large swathes of Poland, Italy and Ukraine.  The artist fled there to lie low when his growing reputation for sexually explicit pictures left Vienna too hot to handle. He soon ran into problems in Krumau too, but before he did he managed to produce a good body of work portraying local people and a whole series of innovative roof-and-landscapes. A lot of these pictures are illustrated in Egon Schiele und Krumau: die Stadt am blauen Fluss by Franz E. Wischin [BL shelfmark: LB.31.b.16502] and Between ruin and renewal: Egon Schiele’s landscapes by Kimberly A. Smith [YC.2005.b.2315].

Dissolution of the Empire in 1918 placed Krumau in the new republic of Czecho-Slovakia and gave it a Slavic name, but it was not until after 1945 that the town ceased to be mainly German-speaking. Understandably, the expulsion in 1945-6 of Czechoslovakia’s substantial German-speaking minority still evokes powerful emotions on both sides. I hesitate to wade into the matter, but the complex issue is well-summarised in "National Mythologies and Ethnic Cleansing: The Expulsion of Czechoslovak Germans in 1945" by Eagle Glassheim  (Central European History, Vol. 33, No. 4 (2000), pp. 463-486, accessible electronically within the BL ). Many other books in our collections deal with the topic in more detail, from academic studies to memoirs. Flag wars and stone saints: how the Bohemian lands became Czech by Nancy M. Wingfield [YC.2008.a.1072], is an English-language study, while there are examples of German texts at YA.2002.a.38378, and YF.2007.a.31124, and Czech at YF.2007.a.20491. There is even fiction: Brücke über den Fluss by Johannes Gramich [English translation at H.2009/1503].

The Germans of the Sudentenland and South Bohemia made their new homes in Austria or Bavaria, where, ironically, for forty years they enjoyed a higher standard of living than they would have done had they been allowed to remain in Czechoslovakia. Following the disintegration of the Communist bloc, they have begun to return, usually as tourists, to the places where their ancestors lived, and many Czechs in those border regions once more speak excellent German as a second language. Anecdotes talk also of Germans who are learning Czech in order to converse more freely when they visit their grandparents' native cities.

Some people have a bigger vested interest than others. One notable name is that of Karel Schwarzenberg, the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs and former EU Council President. Schwarzenberg is a scion of the old Austro-Hungarian nobility, but his family originally hailed from Germany in the days when its states were part of the Holy Roman Empire. For centuries they held the title Dukes of Krumau and owned the vast, looming castle at Cesky Krumlov, as well as extensive estates elsewhere in South Bohemia. Although the last owner of these estates was a notable anti-Nazi, the castles and lands were confiscated by the Communist government after World War Two, under the so-called Lex Schwarzenberg. Born in Prague in 1938, Karel, the current head of the family, grew up in Austria, but is now a Czech citizen once more, tied by family history to a country which once rejected his family as alien by virtue of their name, language and class.

When I was first interested in Egon Schiele, a visit to his former home in central Europe would barely have been possible except as a member of a guided tour. I grew up thinking of the Communist world as grey and strange, utterly apart from the Europe I knew and the old Europe of 1914, which I learned about as a keen history student. Without wishing to sound too portentous or naïve, I find something very hopeful in seeing how much things have changed in social terms since 1990, and in having the privilege of witnessing Central Europe relax and reclaim its own complex history again.

Janet Ashton (West European Cataloguing Team Manager)

The octopus, the tabloids and the last DACH footie blog until 2014?

So Paul the psychic octopus was right and Spain has knocked Germany out of the World Cup. But Germany, or ‘Schland’  to give the national squad its suddenly popular nickname, had a good innings in the tournament (if that’s not mixing my sporting metaphors). 

As a bit of a sports agnostic, I can’t claim to have watched any of the actual games other than accidental exceprts, but I have found it fascinating to follow the progress of the tournament, not least because of the traditional tabloid obsession with Anglo-German football rivalry and the way this has very slightly and subtly started to change. I met my football-mad brother after the England v Germany match and he freely admitted that ‘the better team won’. Now my brother is by no means one of the Germanophobic ‘two-world-wars-and-one-world-cup’ brigade, so I would expect a balanced view from him, but I did get a feeling that many Britons were showing a more generous and admiring spirit towards the German team than I’ve been aware of in the past.

Certainly when the 2006 World Cup was played in Germany, British reactions were still stuck in an old groove, as reflected in the titles of books from the BL catalogue aimed at English fans  such as: Who do you think you are kidding Mr Klinsmann? (YK.2007.a.11272), Don’t mention the World Cup (YK.2007.a.13978) and Another trial in Nürnburg [sic.] (YK.2009.a.34978). German fan books were less obsessed with past rivalries, revelling instead in what became known as the country’s ‘Sommermärchen’ (‘Summer fairy tale’).

As it happens, the BL bought a number of German books, both popular (e.g. YF.2007.b.3184 ) and more academic (e.g. YF.2010.a.16099), relating to the 2006 World Cup. This was not as frivolous an exercise as it sounds,  because the tournament was something of a watershed in German self-perception, allowing an uncomplicated and unembarrassed feeling of national pride at home and creating a more positive image of hospitality to the teams and fans from abroad.

Perhaps this watershed was a contributory factor in the development of the young and multicultural team  which has made such an impact in South Africa four years on. Certainly when one of the aforementioned British tabloids actually prints an article suggesting that it was ok to support Germany after England had been knocked out of the tournament there must have been some shift in perception! Granted, the bulk of the article is couched in the traditional rhetoric of the World War Two comic strip, and the prime reason given for supporting Germany is that they beat Argentina, but it’s still something of a sea-change in British football coverage. Besides, this year the British press has also started to realise that for the Germans, playing England is really no big deal in terms of traditional rivalries. If the final had been Germany versus Holland, that would really have been seen as the big grudge match in ‘Schland.’

[SR]

Politics without football

Honestly, this post is not about football. Rather it picks up from a previous post. There, I mentioned that the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Horst Köhler, had just resigned – an unprecedented event in the 61 years of this Republic’s history and constitution. The election for the next president will be next Wednesday.

Now, I don’t want to speculate about why Köhler left his office prematurely, and I don’t want to talk much about him, as he is a man of the past (for a biography in German, please read Gerd Langguth’s 412 page-long book; at the BL @ YF.2007.a.27282). Rather I want to point out three things: first, who will be the candidates for this election; second, who votes in this election; third, what might be another outcome of this election’s result.

First, the current government nominated Christian Wulff (sorry, only available in German, but it will give you an idea of him) as a candidate; unlike, Köhler, Wulff is a full-time politican, having been the Minister of the state of Lower Saxony since 2003. The candidate supported by the Social Democrates and the Greens is Joachim Gauck, an independent non-politican, who came to prominence as the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives (the post-reunification archives of the East German Secret Services). Even though it is unlikely that the third and fourth candidates will win, one should list them here: Luc Jochimsen, a former journalist and TV presenter of political programmes, is supported by the "Left Party" and Frank Rennicke, a singer-songwriter from Lower Saxony, who was nominated by two far-right parties.
   
Second, due to Germany’s bad experiences with electing a (federal) president, the post holder’s remits are mainly representational, but s/he has to ratify new legislation. Because of this more representational job specification and the disastrous results of the Volk electing Paul von Hindenburg in 1932, it is maybe not surprising that the president is elected by a Federal Convention, instead of directly by the citizens of Germany. On the one hand, this Convention is made up of parliamentarians (from the Bundestag, the equivalent of the UK’s House of Commons). On the other hand, an equal number of non-parliamentarians represent the federal states; some of these representatives of the Länder (federal states) are not politicians and are sports(wo)men, artists and other luminaries.

Third, if Wulf is elected as new federal president, his successor as Federal Minister of Lower Saxony will be a politician called David McAllister, born in West Berlin to a German mother and, you maybe guessed this, a Scottish father. Therefore it is probably unsurprising that his web page is also available in English!

So don’t think, "Oh, it’s only Wulff as a Federal President!", but do think "Hey! Mukker!", and don’t worry about Lower Saxony - McAllister will do the job!

David McAllister (photo by Torsten Bätge; used under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License)

[CG]

Football and Politics

After the first game of the German football team at the current World Cup, there has been a lot of praise for the squad's playing style and efficiency. However, one important contribution to the "Germans'" success is not their disciplined approach and fitness, it's politics.

Let me explain this: quite a number of the players in this German team  were actually born outside the country or their parents were not born in Deutschland. Some of the "foreign" players had their conflict of nationality eased by the introduction of new laws, coming into effect in 2000. These laws make it not only easier for German-born players to be German citizens, but also in same cases means that since then those born to non-German parents could opt for dual citizenship (something which was only allowed in very exceptional circumstances before 2000).

So, when you think of the following players who were born in Germany, appreciate that by law 11 years ago, some of them would not have been able and be allowed to play for the German team: Dennis Aogo (German mum, Nigerian dad), Serdar Taşçı (Turkish parents), Jérôme Boateng (German mum, Ghanaian dad), Sami Khedira (German mum, Tunsian dad), Mesut Özil (Turkish parents), Mario Gómez (German mum, Spanish dad).

Then there are those team members not born in Germany, but having parents who immigrated to Germany when they were relatively young: Piotr Trochowski (born in Tczew, Poland), Marko Marin (Bosanska Gradiška, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Lukas Podolski (Gliwice, Poland), Miroslav Klose (Kęzierzyn Koźle, Poland), and "Cacau", Claudemir Jeronimo Barretto (Santo André, Brazil).

So from 23 players in this World-Cup’s German squad 11 could have played for another country’s team! Also, most of the German-born players listed above, had to make a choice about their option to be German national after the new law came in to force. With the exception of Cacau, the remaining four players born outside Germany were probably part of broader tendencies in immigration to Germany for reasons of war (Bosnia and Herzegovina) or for economic benefits (Poland). The two players with Turkish parents and three footballers with Polish parents are, of course, also part of the biggest group of immigrants to Germany well before 2007, the time of the following statistics: 1.7 million Turkish citizens, and 384,808 Polish nationals. Statistics from 2005 are even more interesting: 91% of Germany’s population were German citizens, of which 10% have - what is nastily called – an "immigrant background". So, by the old principle of jus sanguinis, in 2005 one could have (maybe!) counted 19% of non-Germans in 2005. In comparison to England, here we had in 2007 87.89% of people being born in England, therefore making them English by jus soli.

I don't want to get into debates over immigration here but if the German team continues to play as well as last weekend, maybe one should not rule out increasing the pool of "English" players – though being an "alien" here myself, I might be slightly biased. Of course, you could just ignore this World Cup altogether and instead concentrate on the World Cup proper, later this year: the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup, Germany, 13 July to 1 August 2010.

[CG]

Advertisements, Medals and Sloane

Fifteen years or more ago, when searching for material to include in the Library’s projected catalogue of German books from the period 1701 to 1750, I came across the following in the General Catalogue: ADVERTISEMENTS. A collection of 231 advertisements, etc., chiefly relating to quack medicines. The greater part  in English, the rest in German.  [1675-1715.]. Examination of the volume (BL shelfmark 551.a.32) showed that only a handful of the advertisements had been separately recorded in the Eighteenth Century Short-Title Catalogue (ESTC). This was no doubt because the vast majority were undated, and therefore could not be assigned with certainty to the 18th century.

The items were mostly small but of irregular sizes, so that many had been folded at the edges. The twenty German pieces turned out not to be advertisements at all, but descriptions of medals from the opening years of the 18th century, mostly commemorating events in the War of the Spanish Succession.

Recto of 551.a.32.(79). Description of a Medal commemorating the relief of Barcelona by the Anglo-Dutch fleet, 1706 Cf. BM Dept. of Coins and Medals, MB2p281.87

What is more, it was clear from the way these octavo single sheets were folded, and from circular impressions on the paper, that they had once served as wrappers for the medals themselves. 

 

 

Verso of 551.a.32.(98), once wrapped around a medal commemorating the victories of Queen Anne over Louis XIV, 1706. 

Cf. BM Dept. of Coins and Medals, MB2p289.98 

 

Since the whole volume had clearly belonged to Sir Hans Sloane, the assumption must be that they had enclosed medals from Sloane’s collection. The British Museum still holds the medals described on these sheets, but an enquiry at the Department of Coins and Medals revealed that because some medals were duplicated in the collection, and many items were destroyed in the war, one can no longer say with certainty whether the surviving specimens belonged to Sloane. Maybe the Merlin collection database that is now being built up on the Museum’s website will one day resolve these mysteries. It is likely that many of the medals were struck in Nuremberg.

 

The world moves on, and returning to this volume in 2010 I discovered first that it has been superbly conserved, each of its components having been flattened out and encased in transparent sheeting. Secondly, the entry in the Integrated Catalogue has been amended to include the words: the rest German descriptions of commemorative coins and medals. (Actually, there are no coins …) Thirdly, many of the advertisements are now individually catalogued in ESTC, whose scope has been extended to include the 17th century to which some of them clearly belong.

Doubtless Alison Walker’s work on compiling the Sloane Printed Books Catalogue has led to greater attention being devoted to this remarkable volume.  But there are as yet no individual bibliographical descriptions of the German pieces… Most of the latter bear on the verso, in the centre of the mark made by the outline of the medal, initials or abbreviations assigning the object to a particular group, e.g. H.M. for Herzog von Marlborough or P.E. for Prinz Eugen, followed in nearly every case by what looks like the number 4 and in a few examples by numbers and abbreviations that appear to indicate the price paid by the collector. 

 

No doubt consultation with colleagues in the Department of Coins and Medals would resolve some of these questions … but one must always leave some mysteries for future generations of curators to solve.

[Graham Nattrass - former Head of German Collections]

 

A star, a Dane, a US-American and a satellite

Last weekend brought emotional and political turmoil to the streets of Germany: 1. Lena Meyer-Landrut won the Eurovsion 2010 title; 2. Horst Köhler quit as President of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Don’t worry, I won’t try to do the impossible of linking both of these events; it is maybe better to follow the good old German line “Ladies first!” (English: “Ladies first”), and concentrate on Lena.

First, the bare facts: Germany had chosen Lena in a competition called “Our Star for Oslo”, which is quite a different approach from how this competion is promoted in Britain (come on Brits, “Your Country Needs You!” sounds too much like a military draft slogan!). Second, whereas the British contribution was written by Pete Waterman and Mike Stock, better known from the 1980s hit-machine Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the “German” song was written by a younger Danish and US-American songwriter duo. Third, the BBC’s Mark Savage even stated that the winning song ‘Satellite’ dragged the ‘Eurovision into the 21st Century’, and that the British song ‘sounded like it had been pulled off a shelf marked "Jason Donovan rejects (1988)".’  That is maybe a bit too harsh and self-deprecating.  

Lena’s manner of pronouncing English – for some native speakers irritating, by some Germans perceived as an “authentic British accent” – was at best quirky. A friend of a friend wrote on Facebook that she was amused by the “Cockney/American/Caribbean/German accent”, and another English native thought that Lena tried to “emulate Lily Allen with the whole Cockney thing”.  

But why did people across Europe and some of the national juries (their 50% shares in the outcomes reduced the scare of “political voting”) like Lena and her song? Well, the song was different and “modern”, but also: 1. The irritating accent was only really annoying to native speakers, and most European citizens aren’t native in English; 2. Like Nicole and her winning song “A Little Peace” in 1982, both young women represented a beautiful, “innocent” and maybe naïve Germany (definitely not these Teutons who mark their territories on European beach fronts with towels!); 3. Unlike the boring old-fashioned or too familiar-sounding entries from Azerbaijan, Britain, and Spain (just to name the ones I could bear to listen to), ‘Satellite’ related more to what younger people today listen to; 4. It is a song with a catchy tune – never mind the words!  

Let me “sign-off” by copying again from a discussion on Facebook:   A friend of a friend: “Decent song from Germany. Hoping they will be happy with this and not bother with the world cup...” My reply: “No never! And the next thing after the footie is getting back the World Cup title for Handball from the French’s Men team in 2011! ;-)”

In that sense, don’t worry about the World Cup in South Africa, or Germany’s new star with its own satellite. Worry about the sports event in Sweden from 14-30 January, 2011!

[CG]

 

 

Cool Germania?

It’s official – Germany and things German are trendy in the UK. It was in the papers so it must be true. Last Sunday’s Observer reported how Michael Hofmann’s translation of Hans Fallada’s  novel Alone in Berlin is currently riding high in the UK bestseller lists. This is an unusual achievement for a novel in translation, especially one first published in the original German over 60 years ago. Then on Monday the Evening Standard published an article looking at German culture in London, apparently inspired by the opening of a new German beer hall in the capital.

As a Germanist and Germanophile, I am of course delighted by this, especially as we are currently approaching the football World Cup, an event which traditionally inspires something of an anti-German feeling in Britain (and especially in England). However, my delight is tinged with slight cynicism since these hints of a ‘Cool Germania’ moment don’t seem to me to break a lot of new ground.

Fallada’s novel is set in Berlin during the Second World War, practically the only period of German history that features in books published here. The idea of a beer hall plays to popular stereotypes, as indeed does the Standard article’s opening reference to ‘seats reserved with towels’. And the fact that a Prom concert with a programme of Beethoven and Mahler symphonies played by the Berlin Philharmonic under Sir Simon Rattle is a sellout will hardly come as a surprise to regular classical concert-goers.

Imagine instead that, for example, Uwe Tellkamp’s Der Turm was a bestseller, German wines were making an impact in Britain's top restaurants and the Scorpions were playing the O2. I think that these things would represent a greater change in British awareness of and openness to German culture.

Still, every little helps, and I hope that the current trends will persuade more people to broaden their German cultural horizons. There are certainly plenty of web opportunities to help them do so, such as the Think German project or the Goethe Institute’s ‘Meet the Germans’ site. And perhaps even the DACH blog…

[SR]

Words nice and nasty

A few years ago the Deutscher Sprachrat, which promotes the German language at home and abroad, ran a poll to find “the most beautiful German word”.  Musing on the results would easily fill a whole post, but I mention it here because, having occasionally worked as a freelance translator, I’ve got a little list of unfavourite German words, which – perhaps perversely – reminds me of this campaign. Unlike the words in the poll, however, my unfavourites are defined not by sound or meaning, but by downright difficulty to translate.

Of course German, like every language, has its classic “untranslatables”, words considered to have a powerful symbolic or emotional weight impossible to convey exactly in another language. One of the poll winners is a fine example.  Look up a dictionary definition of “Habseligkeit” and then read the winning justification and you’ll appreciate the gap. Luckily I don’t usually encounter such poetic problems as I mainly translate promotional material for academic publishers. Instead it’s the language of German academia which causes me grief.

For example, the verb “erschließen” tends to make my heart sink;  it basically means to open something up or make it accessible, but used to describe the function of a library catalogue – “Der Katalog erschließt zum erstenmal die Manuskripte der Bibliothek” – it can make for awkward English unless you change the focus slightly: “The catalogue offers the first full description of the Library’s manuscripts”. Provided that is the case and the catalogue is fully descriptive rather than a finding aid. “Systematisch” is an other particular unfavourite, “Ansatz” can be a headache, and even “Wissenschaft” itself can be tricky.

Another problem occurs where German uses both a “Latin” and a “Germanic” word for the same thing. Of course you can often pull off the same trick in English, but sometimes the two German words only have one obvious English synonym: I recently found an author’s  “Selbstbiographie” described in the same sentence as an important “autobiographisches Zeugnis”, but “His autobiography is an important autobiographical document” sounds distinctly odd in English.

Out of context, or to a formally qualified translator, this probably sounds like small beer. But I do find that it’s the superfically straightforward words, rather than the famous untranslatables or false friends, which set traps for the unwary. It fills me with admiration for translators who work on literary texts and have to (re-)create a work or art and reflect an individual voice as well as conveying a coherent meaning. My colleague Patricia Tiney has successfully done just that in her newly published  translation of a story by Theodor Fontane, Under the Pear Tree,  the first full English version of this work.

Finally, despite my rogues gallery of unfavourite German words, I have my own favourites too. Like the Sprachrat’s poll respondents, I love these for their sound as much as anything. And top of my personal poll? For many years that has been “Ewigkeit” (Eternity) – a lovely, spacious word for a lovely, spacious concept.

[SR]

Discoveries 6 : Musik im Spiegel der Philatelie

Another discovered collection item which, as it is somewhat quirky, I’d like to share with you. Unfortunately, the last couple of weeks have been extremely busy at the British Library: I can’t remember how I stumbled across this one – well, apart from searching for the German word “Spiegel” (mirror) I can’t quite recall what I did. It might have been a DSC request or it might have been another kind of outside “prompt” making me search for this.

So, the title I discovered is:
Megla, Gerhard K., Musik im Spiegel der Philatelie. (Tübingen : Wasmuth, c1984.)
YV.1987.b.2041
(sys 007486180)

This book combines three areas: first, it’s about philately, and second, how stamps mirror music. Thirdly, it’s a book printed in Germany, but refers to stamps, and therefore relates to the British Library’s Philatelic Collection. This collection, housed here in St. Pancras, has over 8 million items from most countries of the world.

Even if you can’t read German (the explanations of the stamps will elude you), you can enjoy the reproduction of the 401 stamps in this volume. Just to give you a flavour of how this book is structured and what kind of stamps are highlighted:

• Composers
• Performers
• Folk and ritual dances
• Instruments

Interestingly, this book also points out, for example, which composers had not been commemorated with a stamp by 1984. For example, Megla identifies four composers which are missing out on philatelic stardom, but which were important for Baroque music: Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707), Henry Purcell (1659-1695, I can’t quite believe that there were no stamps commemorating Purcell by 1984), Johann Kuhnau (1660-1722) and Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764).

I’m always interested to highlight a bonmot, or just a nice phrase, and here it must be the author of this book quoting Beethoven as saying “Nicht Bach – Meer sollte er heißen!” [Bach = brook in German, so it’s “Not Brook – He should be called Sea!”] Unfortunately, there is no reference for this quotation.

As you might be cringing already, I might as well, share the following faux-pas of the East German postal   service, when they issued a commemorative stamp for Robert Schumann in 1956. Unfortunately, the first issue contained music by Franz Schubert in the background (see stamp to the right); the corrected version with music by Schumann is to the left.

And finally, in order to tie this blog post in to a current exhibition we have in the library (until 16 May 2010): Chopin: The Romantic Refugee. Frederic Chopin was born 200 years ago, and whereas there will probably be new philatelic items issued this year, I add the following two examples:

Many thanks to my colleague Paul Skinner for helping with digital scans of all the stamps from the British Library’s Universal Postal Union Collection for this blog post.
[CG]