International Symposium Proceedings

The Sieboldiana Collection at the Ruhr University Bochum

Regine MATHIAS (Translated by Jakub POPRAWA)

Today, the various collections of the Siebold family are scattered around the globe. The ethnological collections belong to the founding collections of the ethnographic museums of Leiden and Munich. A large part of the manuscripts and books collected by Siebold are preserved in Leiden and in the British Library. The natural history collections can be found in the herbaria and zoological collections of Leiden, Munich and elsewhere.

A large and important part of Siebold’s personal scientific estate is kept at the Ruhr University Bochum. The documents preserved in the Siebold Archive of the Ruhr University comprise about 20,000 pages, and they represent the only collection of 19th century manuscripts at this young university.

How this collection came to Bochum has as many twists as a detective story, and to some extent they also document the rich history of German-Japanese relations and German research on Japan. The Siebold collection in Bochum contains all kinds of documents which were originally kept in the Siebold family (today the family of von Brandenstein-Zeppelin, at Brandenstein Castle, Schlüchtern, Hessen). After 1915 it was divided between two descendants. In 1927 a granddaughter of Siebold, Erika von Erhard, sold her share of some 600 items to the Japan Institute, which had recently been founded in Berlin. This is the nucleus of our Sieboldiana collection at Bochum, which is therefore closely related to the Siebold documents still kept in the family archives at Brandenstein. Our hope is that the planned database of all Siebold collections as a part of the National Institutes for the Humanities project will at least virtually reunite these two parts of the original estate.

During the Second World War, the library of the Japan Institute of Berlin, which comprised more than 15,000 volumes, as well as parts of the Siebold collection, were moved to different locations. The rest remained in Berlin, partly to keep up the facade and “to discourage defeatism.” As witnessed by Martin Ramming, then head of the Japan Institute of Berlin, these remaining objects were removed by the Russian military during the last days of the war.

Today’s Siebold collection at the Ruhr University comprises those parts that were confiscated by the US Army in Thuringia and transported to Washington. In 1958 they were returned to Germany, into the custody of the Max Planck Society. In 1966 the society decided to give the books and the Sieboldiana collection to the newly founded Ruhr University in Bochum. Since that time further parts of the original collection have been retrieved from various places, including the Trautz collection of

The Sieboldiana Collection at the Ruhr University Bochum 205 the University of Bonn and US libraries and archives. As a result the Bochum Sieboldiana collection now consists of 415 items with about 20,000 pages, thus forming about two-thirds of the original collection of the Japan Institute in Berlin. A few items from the original stock were returned from the Soviet Union to the National Library (Staatsbibliothek) in East Berlin, and still remain in the manuscript department of this institution. Among them is the original of the diary “Journal during my trip to the Imperial Court in Yedo in 1826.” The rest of the collection is still missing. However, at least parts of these lost documents are preserved as copies. These documents were brought to Tokyo on the occasion of a Siebold exhibition in 1935 and were copied there. These copies are nowadays kept in the library of the Toyo Bunko in Tokyo and are also available in microfilm form in Bochum.

In 1989 the Sieboldiana collection at the Ruhr University was completely inventorized, described and catalogued. Since 2010, we have been digitizing the items in close cooperation with Japanese colleagues and with financial support from Japan. Soon we will make it available online as full text version for international research.

The complete Sieboldiana collection includes a wide array of mostly handwritten documents: letters, notes, drafts of publications, diaries, collection catalogues, as well as purchase orders and invoices from Siebold’s time in Dejima, and, to a lesser extent, visual material. Because of the thematic width of the documents, they are relevant for a number of very different disciplines: from weather and climate research to medicine, natural sciences, history and linguistics. In the Bochum Sieboldiana collection there are also many originals of the so-called “dissertations,” written mostly in Dutch by his Japanese students. Through these Siebold gained information on various subjects, from obstetrics to the history of Japan. These dissertations are a main attraction of our archive.

Further examples are his extensive notes on geography, population growth and other topics, as well as a few notebooks or diaries, e.g. a “journal” from 1861 (fig. 1), in which he recorded observations about the weather. Another part of our collection deals with the flora and fauna of Japan. This includes herbaria catalogues, plant lists, and letters by botanists such as Zuccarini, who worked with Siebold, as well as numerous notes and sketches on zoological observations.

There are also a number of materials which can be classified as linguistic and cultural or historical research, such as vocabulary lists of the Aino language, lists of Chinese characters, syllabary characters and Dutch translations, as well as writing with entries about the weather exercises – possibly by Siebold himself (fig. 2).

Siebold used these materials to compile his great works Flora Japonica , Fauna Japonica and Nippon. Since the documents stored in Bochum partly reflect different stages of his work, they shed light not only on his sources, but in many cases they also allow a reconstruction of his scientific methods.

206 International Symposium Proceedings ̶ Siebold’s Vision of Japan In contrast to the family archives at Brandenstein castle, there are only a few pictorial representations in Bochum. Among those is a handscroll illustrating poem competitions between various professions, probably dating from the late 18th century (PL. 1, fig. 3). Another example is a scroll depicting the itinerary of Kōkaku Tennō to the Shūgaku-in Rikyū in Kyoto (PL. 2, fig. 4).

The specialist fields of researchers who use the archive materials reflect the collection’s disciplinary breadth. An ongoing project is that of a Japanese mineralogist, Prof. Tokuhei Tagai, who has worked as a Humboldt fellow at the Siebold Archive in Bochum for several months. He succeeded in largely reconstructing Siebold’s collection of minerals by comparing different collections in Leiden, Vienna etc. with Siebold’s research !"#$% documents in Bochum. On this basis he is attempting to write attributed to Siebold &'( Siebold’s planned but never realised work Mineralogia Japonica, the third volume of a trilogy to complement Flora and Fauna.

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The Sieboldiana Collection at the Ruhr University Bochum 207 The Siebold archive further offers many opportunities for our students of Japanese studies, regardless of whether their personal interests lie in history or linguistics. For instance, we are preparing a virtual Siebold exhibition with our students during a seminar; this will give insights into the collection for interested people.

This international collaboration was launched in 2010 with the support of the National Institutes for the Humanities to sift through and examine documents and objects with reference to Japan in various countries. The main objective of this project is to investigate the collection of the Siebold family and other materials that were collected in 19th century in Japan and taken abroad.

In the course of this symposium, “Siebold’s vision of Japan - As represented in Japan-related Collections in the West” the members of our collaboration team and selected guests from Europe will discuss issues associated with these collections and their value for the humanities and natural sciences in Japan and abroad. By doing so, we hope to expand our long-term research on these topics and to broaden our knowledge of this very important phase in the 19th century, during which Japan underwent significant changes.

As head of the Siebold archive, and together with my colleague Sven Osterkamp of the Japanese studies department at the Ruhr University Bochum, we are pleased that this symposium, attended by top-class researchers and reflecting the broad range of topics in our project, is being held in Bochum, and that we can welcome you as our guests. And now I would like to thank you all for your patience and officially open the symposium.

(Ruhr University Bochum)

208 International Symposium Proceedings ̶ Siebold’s Vision of Japan