Archive means: transfer with staying power
Dr Joachim Studberg and the public university archive

The old gentleman sat at his large desk in the middle of the parlour. Two walls were lined with bookcases. On smaller tables were documents with wooden capsule seals, folios bound in pigskin, a book from which hung a cow chain in the format of the Trausnitz dungeon chain, and several bundles of old files. (...) *1

This is how August Sperl describes the archivist in his 1921 novel of the same name. The historian and social scientist Dr Joachim Studberg has held this position at the University of Wuppertal for thirty years. He is currently securing expired student files handed over by the Student Secretariat from the former University of Education, which was transferred to the Wuppertal Comprehensive University in 1972 when it began teaching. "These are documents from people who started their studies at the PH at the end of the 1960s," he says, "there's some very interesting data in there and it's being digitised. We are then able to retrieve such files from our repository at lightning speed using the electronic finding aids." These archive-worthy files provide information about internship certificates, CVs and even literary preferences. He suggests: "You could, for example, use such archive files to conduct an investigation into the alleged reading behaviour of certain years." And the CVs in themselves also form a huge source base that sociologists or educational scientists could access. However, there is also a data protection issue with this transfer. "Unlike a library," explains the 61-year-old, "we have archiving protection periods here," and these only allow personal documents to be used "ten years after death, sixty years after the end of the file or one hundred years after birth". This means that the newly archived student files, whose owners were generally born in the 1940s, will not be able to be examined until 2040 at the earliest.

"Archive means transfer with staying power," says the Schwelm native, who began building up the university archive thirty years ago.
"In 1988, one of the first official acts of the new rector, Prof Dr Dr h.c. Siegfried Maser, was to establish a university archive," says Studberg. He commissioned the then historian Prof Dr Karl-Hermann Beeck to draw up a concept. Funds for a temporary job creation scheme were then made available via the labour office. The newly graduated historian Joachim Studberg was then hired for the summer semester of 1990.

In the following years, the university's keeper of the past experienced a varied development in the office of archivist, which initially led him to the central student guidance and counselling services after the end of his temporary employment, where he became a full-time student advisor. For many years, he carried out his archive duties on a purely voluntary basis. Today, he officially manages the university archive with a twenty-hour position. He is assisted by two student assistants in the small section on the Freudenberg campus.

"What an incredibly interesting job you have!" exclaimed the major enthusiastically.
"New research tripsevery day , a new discovery every hour -"(...)*2


(Dr Joachim Studberg in the archive)

The busy collector of Wuppertal's university history receives around 70 accessions per year, mostly from the faculties, the university administration and the central institutions, which corresponds to a volume of around 500 folders. And he already has to pre-sort the submissions. "We are not a registry or junk room," he explains, which is why he rejects many offers if they are not worthy of archiving: "In twenty per cent of cases, I go to the collection point and make up my own mind on the spot." Studberg then always has a pencil with him to mark interesting material with an "A" for "archive worthy".

This is also how a very interesting trouvaille from former physics professor Jürgen Drees ended up in his archive. "Many of the professors' documents remain in the cupboards of the faculties long after they have retired," he says, which are then disposed of at some point. A tip from a member of the physics department he knew well, who was following the disposal process, brought the archivist to the faculty. "There were cupboards in the corridor with the returns of many physics professors," he reports. "I just said: 'Don't throw it away! '"

Dr Studberg secures and stores the archive-worthy materials in the university archive. As he is not always able to judge the academic value himself, in the case mentioned above he called the emeritus professor without further ado and they both examined the documents. In the process, Professor Drees came across his old USA documents. "He had completely forgotten about them; from his time in the USA, when he had worked with the later Nobel Prize winners Prof Dr Taylor, Prof Dr Friedman and Prof Dr Kendall, he had a notebook with notes and data that were one of the foundations for the later Nobel Prize." He then honourably transferred these private documents to the university archive.

Another archival item shows that the archive also harbours documents that make us smile today. In the 1950s, students at the former Werkkunstschule Wuppertal, from which today's designers emerged, organised well-known carnival parties in the city, which did not seem entirely kosher to the law enforcement officers. The police smuggled an informer into the parties to observe the illegal goings-on and report back afterwards. As a result, there is a letter in the archives from the police chief at the time, who wrote to the director of the Werkkunstschule. Studberg comments: "According to the letter, the officer noticed that female students were getting rid of their brassieres in dark corners and then indulging in, quote: "wild jazz dances" with their fellow students.

The archivist often only realises how important it is to maintain contact with professors and staff and to attend alumni reunions in retrospect. "I have received photos from alumni from their student days, certificates and textbooks, which they donated to the archive."

Studberg is particularly proud of a unique photo album of the former deputy head of the building department, Klaus Nölle, who documented the first construction work on the Grifflenberg campus. "We are very lucky that Mr Nölle has a heart for the university and donated his album to the archive. We have digitised some photos from it and they are also on the archive homepage."

However, this desert harbours its oases, and we come to them in the peak hours of our existence. (...) *3

In addition to mainly written testimonies, the archive's collection also includes pictures, posters and films. "We have a golden ring of honour from the founding rector, the chain of office designed by Rector Maser and symbolic founding keys; all of this is part of the archive holdings.

And then there are the so-called office pictures. He explains with a laugh: "When the new university of education was built in 1957, there was still money for art in the building. And funnily enough, it was our later first dean, Professor Günter Sturm, who worked at the State Building Authority in the 1950s, when he bought a package of all kinds of pictures from an "art in construction" budget through a gallery in Düsseldorf. These included Japanese woodcuts and hand-signed prints, which were hung in the offices of the PH professors. There were about 70 works. And some then, let's be careful, diffused until the move to Grifflenberg." By chance, Studberg found a signed print by Lovis Corinth, one of the legendary office paintings, at a professor's house in 2008. "We now have more than half of these office pictures back together, restored and signed," he explains. These and a good hundred other registered works of art are on permanent loan, mostly in the offices of the University of Wuppertal. "Because I know the university, I always think about who might be a good match for which picture." As a result, his loan rate is a remarkable 98 per cent.

The dedicated historian was finally able to successfully follow another cold trail in the art world. The sculpture entitled "Start" by artist Prof Beate Schiff was originally erected behind Building I in 1973. After car parks were later built there, the sculpture disappeared for around ten years. Through constant research and with the help of the university's social welfare organisation, Studberg was able to find out that the object had initially been housed in the canteen area and then stored in a former armoured garage on the new Freudenberg campus. "Then, at my request, an expert opinion was drawn up on the battered sculpture and Mr Vaupel from the Stadtsparkasse approved 25,000 euros so that it could be restored by a specialist workshop. "Now," he says proudly, "it stands next to the main entrance on Gaußstraße."

From here, the name "Start" is the programme, Studberg offers historical campus tours on the founding and building history, which are now accepted by many small groups.

But now to the fourth and final part of my sermon - that is science as the archivist's field of work. The scientific research that we ourselves conduct in our spare time, and that to which we guide the researcher who is drawn from the great scientific world to our shores. (...) *4

A major challenge for the future is digital archiving, which Studberg explains using a simple example: "The rectors' annual calendars used to be bound in leather. They contained the important dates. Today we have Outlook calendars. The question is, are we allowed to archive this software at all? How can digital formats remain readable indefinitely? That's a highly complex matter." Working in close consultation with the university information and media centre (ZIM) is essential.

Above all, it is important to him that the university archive is a public archive, open to internal and external enquiries. "I also receive a relatively large number of enquiries from outside," he says and would like "professors from all faculties to encourage their students, for example, to at least write their Master's thesis with the help of archive holdings. We have many interesting sources, including in the estates. I would like to see even more academic work done in the university archives."

The archivist sat in his office on the ground floor of the archive building and slowly moved a burning glass over the badly faded lines of a large document. (...) *5

In the magazine room, Joachim Studberg puts on his white cotton gloves to show a handwritten lecturer's conference book from the Wuppertal PH. At this moment, he is reminiscent of the hero of August Sperl's novel as he flicks through the pages of the book, almost reverently, and thus emphatically shows how important this work is to him.

*1-5 from: August Sperl, The Archivist, Munich 1921

Uwe Blass (interview from 26 April 2018)

Dr Joachim Studberg studied history and social sciences in Wuppertal and has worked as an archivist and academic advisor at the university of Wuppertal since 1990.