Heike Fricke – Permanent Seminar Series – September 25, 17:00 CEST / 16:00 BST

Join us to the next seminar of the REM@KE Permanent Seminar Series with our guest speaker, Heike Fricke, on Friday, September 25, starting at 17:00 CEST / 16:00 BST.

Tracing Objects, Reconstructing Networks: Provenance Research into Seven String Instruments Formerly Owned by the German Reich

(Click on the image to open the PDF in a new tab).

Abstract:

This talk presents the methods and findings of a provenance study commissioned by the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM). It investigates seven string instruments formerly owned by the German Reich and transferred to the Federal Republic of Germany in the early 1950s. Combining archival research, object documentation, image comparison, and the reconstruction of networks linking dealers, officials, and musicians, the study examines both individual object biographies and the structures of the Nazi-era musical instrument trade. Two case studies show how fragmented records, conflicting attributions, and possible alterations to labels or instruments complicate identification and obscure transfers of ownership. The results are documented at event level in the research database musiXplora, enabling both, close examination and comparative analysis. None of the seven provenances could be classified as fully unproblematic; two show substantial indications of Nazi-persecution-related loss or otherwise problematic acquisition circumstances. The talk argues for an integrated archival, organological, technical, and digital approach to provenance research.
The report can be found on the website of the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media: kulturstaatminister.de (in German).
You can also navigate the Project on MusiXplora. An example of an instrument covered from page 106 of this report: http://musixplora.de

Musicologist Dr. Heike Fricke is recognized in academic circles as an established expert on the clarinet. Photo: Swen Reichhold

Heike Fricke is a musicologist and organologist specialising in musical-instrument provenance, collection history, historical woodwinds, and digital organology. She has served as project director for several externally funded research projects, most recently a provenance investigation commissioned by the German Federal Government into fine historic string instruments formerly owned by the German Reich. She has worked with major musical-instrument collections in Berlin, Edinburgh, and Leipzig and held an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Her books include Die DDR als Sammlerin (The GDR as a Collector, with Josef Focht), Lost & Found: Die Klarinetten des Fürsten (with Josef Focht), and Georg Kinskys nie gedruckte Geschichte der Blasinstrumente (with Josef Focht and Camilo Salazar Lozada). She serves on MGG Online’s Scholarly Editorial Board for Organology and is a founding member and vice-chair of Netzwerk Digitale Organologie e.V. She is also editor and publisher of rohrblatt, the German journal for oboe, clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon.

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