Lapsed into History: J. D. E. Preuß, the Prussian Academy of Sciences, and the Struggle for Access to State Archives in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Berlin

Abstract

The article addresses the practice of archival editing in Berlin around 1850. The archive as a contested space of knowledge, to which researchers demanded entry and which government authorities only reluctantly made accessible, provides the frame for the study. It aims to examine the strategies and arguments, with which this contest was fought out. How did archival research projects shape the roles of the project coordinators, of the researchers and of the archivists? Which role was assigned to the public in the struggle for access to state archives? The specific project, by which these questions are explored, is the thirty-volume edition of the works of Frederick the Great produced under the auspices of the Prussian Academy of Sciences from 1840 to 1856. The article first outlines the historical background of the research project, starting with a brief biography of Johann David Erdmann Preuß, a scholarly outsider who had initiated the edition. Second, the article addresses the Academy’s efforts in gaining access for Preuß to the Prussian state archives, with particular attention to the self-narratives of the various scholarly personae involved in this discussion on archival accessibility.

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