The History of the Archive

The idea of an archive for the history of music in Germany can be traced back to the late 19th century. Max Seiffert, one of the first editors of the important publication series "Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst", had begun to compile a "Prussian General Catalogue", which was to include all the sources on German music history. The endeavour was initially continued at the "Fürstliches Institut für musikwissenschaftliche Forschung i. E. zu Bückeburg", then at the Staatlichen Institut für deutsche Musikforschung in Berlin until 1943. All cataloguing work was lost during the war, and only a small part of the once extensive photographic collection has survived to this day.

After the war, the tradition of the great German memorial editions was revived by the Musikgeschichtliche Kommission, which brought together renowned German music researchers under the chairmanship of Friedrich Blume; the first follow-up volume of the "Erbe deutscher Musik" series was published as early as 1954.

However, the intention was not only to continue the series of editions, but also to take up the idea of a complete overview of German sources on music history and at the same time to counteract a possible future loss of sources, as had become increasingly apparent as a result of the war, by centralising them on microfilm in one place.

With these objectives in mind, the commission founded the Deutsches Musikgeschichtliches Archiv (DMgA) in Kassel in 1954; the commission appointed Harald Heckmann as the first director of the archive. He was followed by Jürgen Kindermann in 1970, Rainer Birkendorf in 1994 and Carola Finkel in 2023.