F4 The German Society of Pennsylvania: A Research Guide to its Library Collections Compiled by Bettina Hess February 2016 rev. June 2018 0 Introduction p. 2 History and Brief Overview of the Collections p. 2 Books Main Collection p. 5 German American Collection p. 9 Carl Schurz Collection p. 30 Reference Collection p. 30 Pamphlets Main Collection p. 31 German American Collection p. 31 cataloged p. 31 uncataloged letter size boxes without call numbers p. 40 legal size boxes with call numbers p. 69 legal size boxes without call numbers p. 81 Carl Schurz Collection pamphlet box lists p. 82 Ephemera German American Collection Letter size boxes with call numbers p. 174 Letter size boxes without call numbers p. 192 Legal size boxes without call numbers p. 195 Manuscripts Mss. I Collections with finding aids p. 197 Collections with catalog entries p. 217 collections by size with inventories: Mss. IIa -- Letter size boxes p. 221 Mss. IIb -- Legal size boxes p. 224 Mss. III -- flat boxes (12 x 16 “) p. 227 Mss. IV -- flat boxes (14 x 18 “) p. 232 Mss. Oversize (20 x 24”) p. 235 Mss. Oversize Gallery (24 x 36”) p. 241 Minimally processed manuscript collections p. 244 Newspapers/Periodicals Newspapers on microfilm p. 307 German American imprints -- bound volumes p. 311 German imprints -- bound volumes p. 327 1 Introduction This research guide to the German Society of Pennsylvania’s Joseph Horner Memorial Library is an update to the original guide written by Kevin Ostoyich in 2006 (The German Society of Pennsylvania: A Guide to its Book and Manuscript Collections) and published by the German Historical Institute. The Society is most grateful to the German Historical Institute for generously sponsoring this revised edition. The first edition of the Research Guide was written after the completion of a five year project that aimed to catalog the book and pamphlet holdings of the library. In the decade since the guide was originally published, there has been a great deal of progress in cataloging, organizing and processing the remaining parts of the collections, making a revision to the original research guide necessary. Almost all the books in the Main and German American collections have now been cataloged and are retrievable through Worldcat (www.Worldcat.org ) and the Society’s own catalog (gsp.library.net). Other areas of the collections are not yet represented in the catalog, so this research guide aims to provide access to those “hidden treasures” by offering descriptions and inventories to those items. Pamphlets, manuscripts and ephemera have been organized and inventories created for each box. A comprehensive list of uncataloged newspapers and periodicals has also been created. The most progress has been in the area of manuscripts, with many manuscript collections having been arranged and described, and complete finding aids now available. This part of the library’s holdings had been very minimally processed at the writing of the original guide, and while many collections, most notably the German Society’s own records, are now much more accessible, the work is ongoing and manuscripts continue to be added to the catalog. History and Brief Overview of the Collections The Joseph P. Horner Memorial Library is the preserved Volksbibliothek of the German Society of Pennsylvania. The library flourished throughout the 19th century and books were actively collected until the 1960s. It contains over 50,000 volumes, spanning the 16th through 20th centuries, with the vast majority published in the 19th century. Approximately 90 percent are in the German language (the majority of the English language holdings having been deaccessioned). The Society was founded in Philadelphia in 1764 with the objective of aiding newly arrived German-speaking immigrants. In 1817, a library was established to provide reading materials to its members and other German-speaking Philadelphians. In 1839, the library’s holdings were cataloged into seven groupings: Theology, History, Moral Sciences, Physical Sciences, Geography and Travel, Art, and Literature. During the middle third of the century, the collection grew modestly with English-language acquisitions predominating. This reflected the fact that between 1818 and 2 1859 English served as the official language of the society.1 In 1860, German was re- established as the official language of the Society, and German-language books again predominated in the library. By the late 1860s, the library, then under the stewardship of Oswald Seidensticker, regained its distinctively German character.2 Seidensticker (1825– 1894), a professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania since 1867, chaired both the Society’s Library and Archive Committees. It was Seidensticker’s establishment of the Archives as a repository of German-American print culture that makes the library of the German Society of Pennsylvania the valuable resource it is today. The Main Collection of the library has been housed in its current location since 1888. From 1994 to 1999, University of Pennsylvania Germanic Languages Professor Frank Trommler and Director of Bryn Mawr College Libraries Elliott Shore led a restoration and cataloging project of the library’s holdings, with funding from the German Foreign Office, Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Robert Bosch Foundation, Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania. As a result of this project, over 20,000 volumes were cataloged into the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN). Many of the books were also cleaned and repaired. The library also underwent extensive renovation between February 1998 and September 1999, with much needed climate control being added. In 2007, the Research Libraries Group was merged with OCLC, and all the RLIN records were transferred to the Worldcat database (www.Worldcat.org). Since that time, cataloging of books and pamphlets has continued with support from the government of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Max Kade Foundation. All non-fiction works published through 1960 have now been cataloged. The books and most of the pamphlets in the German American Collection have been cataloged. The primary areas that remain to be addressed are the uncataloged books in the Carl Schurz collection and a review of the post-1917 fiction section of the Main library. The original Archive started by Oswald Seidensticker, now known as the German American Collection (GAC), consists of over 10,000 items. As a part of the restoration project of the 1 Trommler, Frank. “The Library of the German Society of Pennsylvania and Its Consoliation under Oswald Seidensticker,” in: Atlantic Understandings: Essays in honor of Hermann Wellenreuther, ed. Claudia Schnurmann and Hartmut Lehmann (Hamburg: LitVerlag, 2006.) 2 Seidensticker, Oswald. Die Geschichte der Deutschen Gesellschaft von Pennsylvanien. (Philadelphia : Graf & Breuninger, 1917.) A new history of the Society was sponsored and published by the German Historical Institute in 2006: Pfleger, Birte. Ethnicty Matters: A History of the German Society of Pennsylvania. 3 1990s, the entire GAC collection was sent to the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, Massachusetts. All items were cleaned and many were repaired or rehoused. Almost all the books and pamphlets in the GAC are now cataloged and can be searched in the online catalog. Manuscripts were not cataloged/described during the restoration project of the 1990s but many have since been processed, with finding aids available for approximately 70% of the collections. The library is generally organized into three collections: the Main Collection, the German American Collection and the Carl Schurz Collection. However, this revised research guide is organized by material type instead of collection, as not all the materials fall neatly into one collection or another. There has been some fluidity over the years, with books being moved from one part of the collection to another. For example, while the majority of books acquired from the National Carl Schurz Association remain as a discrete collection, some titles were integrated into the Main and German American Collections. (The entire Carl Schurz book collection can be “virtually” reassembled, however, by searching “donor=National Carl Schurz Association” in the library’s online catalog.) At some point in time, books printed in the United States were pulled out of the Main collection and added to the German American Collection although this seems not to have been done comprehensively. In addition, periodicals are found in all parts of the library, and manuscript collections were, for the most part, never given call numbers or incorporated into any of the collections, though most of the content relates to German-American individuals and organizations. Newspapers and periodicals have been arranged into two groups: 1) a microfilm collection of newspapers that is stored within the Library Hall and 2) bound volumes of periodicals that have been separated into two groupings: German-American imprints, and German imprints. In early 2015, the original copies of newspapers for which the Society has microfilm were given to the University of Pennsylvania library, which has digitized those titles and will make them available through its website in 2016. (There are additional newspapers scattered throughout other parts of the library that have been cataloged, but most consist of individual issues, rather than extended runs.) 4 BOOKS Main Collection The Main Collection is a model of nineteenth-century German Bildung. Originally, books were acquired in English and German in roughly equal numbers. A reading of the catalog reveals that all of the traditional arts and sciences are covered. Many of the entries can be found in university libraries. However, it should be noted that when the catalogers were entering the books into the Research Library Information Network (RLIN), they found a large number that were unique to the collection. This is due to the peculiar “popular” character of the library. From its inception, the library was to be a Volksbibliothek. Its books were to be read by the members of the Society and the German-speaking community.