Ideology of the Collection and Historiography

Through the project Ideology of the Collection and Historiography. Research-based Digitizing of Historical Theater Material from the Zentralinstitut für Theaterwissenschaft in Vienna 1943-1945 the collection structures of the archive of the Institute for Theater, Film and Media Studies shall be investigated. In addition a best practice for research-based digitization will be developed. The intention of the collector will be determined by means of the collection structures. The question arises which is regarded as historically significant and considered as relevant for the theater composition. The premise is that analyzing the history of a specific collection defines its structure and the purchase of the individual objects in it. The project investigates the collection structure for ideological implications. The founder of the Institute, Heinz Kindermann (1894-1985), was a Nazi ideologist. The structure of the collection of theater materials corresponds to his claim to leadership in the field of theater studies in the so-called "Grossdeutsches Reich". In particular, this is of great significance for collections that were made during the National Socialist era, because provenance issues are especially pertinent in this connection. Furthermore the history of German-language theater collections has only been researched rudimentarily and the examination of the materials has often been problematic or entirely lacking. Exemplary three inventories will be focused: the "Bildarchiv"; the "Zensurarchiv Houben"; and the "Theaterarchiv Leuschke". These three inventories are located at the institute since the foundation in 1943. Though there are no papers that document either of these acquisition. Thence a legitimate acquisition, e.g. photographs of jewish actors, is put into question. Furthermore the inventories includes various types of archive items. At the same time the investigation of the ideology of the collection and the research-based digitization will occur. The planned digitizing will be based on selection criteria. They evolve from the contextualization of the historical collection inventories. By means of the selection criteria the decision of digitization of the single archive item will be made. The inner logic and history of the inventories will be researched by linking them via digital processes. In this connection the selection criteria will be developed in a scholarly historical context. Throughout the alternation of evaluation and research will supervise the project. It is another goal of the project to develop a best practice of digitization on the basis of the selection criteria for similarly structured archives and inventories. Due to the best practice a digital exhibit shall be developed to visualize archive items. Chosen digital data will be displayed in context with their historical origin, provenance and affiliation to other archive items. Thus questions of restitution will be opened in an international public.

The Archiv tfm database, which is being created as part of the FWF project "Collection Ideology and History - Ideology - Collection" (HIC), deals scientifically and critically with selected theater history holdings from the National Socialist founding years of today's Institute for Theater, Film and and media studies apart. A model will be developed as to how collection and object history(s) in theater collections can be digitally recorded using structured (meta)data and, based on this, contextualized and further examined. Challenges are disorganized bundles, unclear origins of materials and the visualization of National Socialist collection, acquisition and classification strategies. The description work in the project is based on the recently published international Standard Records in Contexts (RiC) of the International Council on Archives (ICA). With this ontology, using linked (open) data principles, the archival material can be expanded with contextual metadata and linked to theater-historical resources. The focus of the data description and the digital data processing is the (technical) historical contextualization of the archival materials and the visualization of the acquisition contexts.