In 1936, Paul Hirsch shipped his collection of 18,000 music scores and treatises from Frankfurt to Cambridge, saving it from the Nazi confiscations that destroyed many other German-Jewish libraries. This project reconstructs how Hirsch built that collection and why it survived. Historians know little about how Jewish collectors traded and valued rare music in early 20th-century Europe, or how their libraries functioned as cultural refuges during persecution. By tracing Hirsch’s network of dealers, scholars, and musicians, the research fills a gap in the history of music scholarship and of Jewish intellectual life under Nazism. If successful, the project will produce a detailed provenance study of a major collection now held by the British Library. Public events will show how Hirsch used his library to host concerts and shelter persecuted individuals—a concrete example of how libraries can serve as sanctuaries during political crises. The work is primarily historical and archival, with no immediate practical application, but it provides a model for understanding how cultural assets are displaced, valued, and protected during periods of geopolitical instability.
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This project will investigate the history and provenance of Paul Hirsch’s music collection—one of the world’s most significant private music libraries at the time of his escape from Germany to the UK in 1936. Hirsch's collection of over 18,000 items spans all genres of classical music and all time periods from the 15th to the 20th centuries. It is rich in printed music of the 16th and 17th centuries, early treatises of music theory, early editions of Mozart’s works, printed editions of operas, and illustrated and decorated editions. Until the mid-1930s, Hirsch’s library was based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where it provided a haven for musicians, scholars and persecuted individuals. His library then evaded the fate of confiscation experienced by many libraries of German-Jewish collectors in Nazi Europe, being transferred to Cambridge and then purchased by the British Museum in 1946. The PhD student will research how Hirsch built his collection and how it acted as a cultural centre in Frankfurt, within the context of other collections that the Nazi regime targeted and which were subsequently relocated, dispersed, or destroyed during the 1930s and early 1940s. The research will shed new light on how historical music was traded and valued in the early 20th century, and the intellectual and musical networks in which collectors such as Hirsch operated. Through public engagement events, the project will highlight how Hirsch used his library to host concerts and to offer refuge to persecuted individuals, thus showing how libraries can act as sanctuaries in eras of geopolitical instability. This project will be jointly supervised by Professor Stephen Rose and Dr Simone Gigliotti at Royal Holloway, University of London and by Dr Loukia Drosopoulou and Mr Chris Scobie at the British Library. The student will spend time at both Royal Holloway and the British Library and will become part of the wider cohort of AHRC CDP funded PhD students across the UK.
Chris Scobie (Co-Investigator)Loukia Drosopoulou (Co-Investigator)Professor Stephen Rose (Principal Investigator)Simone Louise Gigliotti (Co-Investigator)
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