14 May 2025

There is no doubt that the initiators of the fellowship programme were thinking big when they introduced the research fellowships in Wolfenbüttel. The PR campaign which accompanied the launch bears witness to their aims. A press release was sent to around 500 newspapers in December 1974. In addition, 1,800 leaflets were posted – by snail mail, of course – to well-known academic organisations, institutional partners and individuals. The extensive campaign culminated in a series of TV and radio interviews with the then-director, Paul Raabe, which were also documented in the library’s own publication Wolfenbütteler Bibliotheksinformationen from 1976 onwards.

The programme was facilitated by the foundation Stiftung Volkswagenwerk, which appointed an advisory board for selecting the fellowships. The federal state of Lower Saxony took over responsibility for the process in 1981, and over the years several further types of research grants have been introduced, mainly at the initiative of private donors.

The process and its rules had to be established, and there were only few role models for the programme that existed at the time. Whereas today, we use editable text files as application forms, applicants used to apply by sending less formally structured  letters to the board. Rather than announcing a fixed application deadline, calls to apply for a grant were issued on an ad hoc basis. Hard to imagine today, but in the past, candidates would be contacted multiple times to clarify whether they were eligible for a fellowship, and their applications would be negotiated in a back-and-forth series of questions and modifications. Moreover, at some point, it was agreed that applicants should be interviewed in person by the committee, to gain a better impression of their personal and scholarly skills. The time required to select fellows in such a way is just one of the reasons why today the decision is based on written, form-based applications. It is also interesting to note that, fellows were initially not obliged to stay in residence, unlike today (at least for the time being). Perhaps that kind of restriction was not necessary in an era when digitisation that  which is the basis for remote research work in our collections was unknown.

Whenever a programme is in the making, the infrastructure surrounding it is correspondingly limited. This shortcoming was tackled enthusiastically, with the board already announcing in 1974 that the building known as Anna-Vorwerk-Haus had been rented for the purpose. It is still at the heart of the programme, serving as a venue for regular colloquia and other modes of exchange while also providing space where visiting scholars can work. Administrative offices were also set up here (led by Sabine Solf from 1975 onwards, with Jill Bepler taking over in 1990).

All those involved had a decidedly international perspective –­­ their desire was to avoid provincialism. The international background of the fellows testifies to the success of this aspiration: in the second year of the programme, a total of 12 people from six countries received scholarships. The United States played a key role here as the country of origin of four of the fellows.

European cultural history was the dominating thematic emphasis of the projects selected by the committee. This relates to the fact that the HAB at the time received the extended title ”non-university research and study centre focusing on European cultural history of the medieval and early modern periods”. The legacy of this label today is double-edged. Only now are we gradually beginning to benefit from the significance of less Eurocentric research at the library. However, Wolfenbüttel did resemble the much-admired American research centres in terms of the diversity of its fellows: there was a wish to become a ”little Princeton” in Wolfenbüttel, with a reputation that spread far beyond Lower Saxony.

Establishing the fellowship programme was just one aspect of the larger plan to raise awareness of the library which Paul Raabe nicknamed ”Bibliosibirsk” on account of its remote location at the edge of what was then the Federal Republic of Germany. The advertising campaign stated that the HAB was making a contribution towards ‘visualising and preserving the intellectual value of tradition in the modern world’. Contemplating the value of tradition was a response to not only to the East–West conflict but probably also to the student protests, which some people regarded as hugely problematic for this kind of selective research funding.

Today, the fellowship programme has been in place for half a century and sees itself less as a means of preserving values than as a setting for a lively, critical exchange (of knowledge) that transcends academic disciplines and national borders. While it is true that there has always been a need for this process, today, more than ever, it is a privilege that we are well aware of. Acknowledging and celebrating this success means thanking not only those who laid the foundations of the programme and the institutions that supported it but also, vitally, the fellows themselves. Our gratitude goes to you all as we wish the fellowship programme many happy returns!

PURL: http://diglib.hab.de/?link=205