Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv acquires collection to the Bayreuth Festival
Since its foundation by Richard Wagner in 1876, the Bayreuth Festival has been one of Bavaria's outstanding cultural events with international broadcasting. After laborious years of construction and a phase of ideological segregation by the National Socialists, a new beginning was achieved after World War II. The Bayreuth Festival has been attracting political and social prominence every year since 1951.
The Bavarian State Archive has now been able to acquire an extensive private collection of the Bayreuth Festivals from the post-war period. For the post-war period, the collection stock formed from it and from existing material includes all the program books of the Festival, accompanying publications such as the “Festspiel Preview” and the “Festspiel News” and other printed material that often has rarity value. The press sections and photo albums contained are of particular importance. The photo albums not only combine the official role and stage photos, but also complement them with private recordings from the social environment and the inner circle of artistic actors. In addition to the national and partly international press, the press sections also take into account the rest of the German-speaking press. The media echo of the Bayreuth Festival is thus gathered in a number of times – from pre-reporting on current reviews and reports to review. In the cultural sector – unlike in politics – there are often few official sources and usually fewer private sources. In addition, discourses were often medial. Therefore, the delivery of press in the cultural sector is of particular quality. The dense delivery to press clips in the Bayreuth Festival Collection is therefore a special lucky case.
The documents were collected by Willy Wesemann (1910–1985). The violinist was a member of the Festival Orchestra for decades and was therefore closely related to all artistic participants. As an enthusiastic collector, he took great effort. During the festive season, he referred to the most important press organs himself and advertised them for his collection, as well as photographed himself. All press cutouts were finely cut, provided with source information and stored clean. His whole family was involved in these works. His daughter Astrid Zimdahl-Wesemann has now left the collection of about three shelves to the Free State of Bavaria.
The new “Bayreuth Festival Collection” complements the existing collections of the Bavarian Main State Archive with reference to the Bayreuth Festival. In addition to the state tradition mainly from the Ministry of Culture, this is mainly the two estates of Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner. In their time, both of them were decisive for the Bayreuth Festival and the opera world as a whole.
The Bayerische Hauptstaatsarchiv is the central archive of the Free State of Bavaria and one of the largest archives in Germany. In addition to official documents, it also retains non-state archives. These include in particular estates of important personalities and collections.
