The German Dance Archive, Cologne (Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln)

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Notes

Conceived as the beginning of a supraregional university for dance, this institution was initially called the Deutsche Meisterwerkstätten für Tanz, with Lizzie Maudrik, Mary Wigman, and Gret Palucca as dance instructors during the earliest period.

Rolf Cunz was “the highly influential desk officer for dance in the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda” (Marion Kant, Hitler's Dancers: German Modern Dance and the Third Reich [Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2003], 38).

This collection is mainly twenty scrapbooks, dating from approximately 1911–1930, which also contain original New York photographs of Paul Swan and Marion Morgan's Art Dancers (1915/16) and a collection taken over by Böhme in September 1940 containing photo postcards.

The holdings were relocated to Seeberg Castle in what was then the Sudetenland (formed in 1939 from annexed areas of Czechoslovakia), whence they disappeared. In fact, the dance books were sold, and now a small number of books with the Czech word vyrazeno (withdrawn from the library) stamped over the original Berlin stamp are in the possession of the DTK thanks to a Czech dance enthusiast.

There were also some unfortunate developments that resulted from the period in which Germany was divided, such as the loss of materials from Laban's personal archive in possession of Marie Luise Lieschke, which she left behind in the German Democratic Republic when she retired to the Federal Republic of Germany to live with her son.

1. Letter to Frida Holst (March 2, 1943) and notes from Fritz Böhme's bequest, Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.

2. Fritz Böhme bequest, Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln.

3. “Questions for the Experts: Valerie Preston-Dunlop,” Part 2, Movement & Dance, vol. 27, no 4 (Winter 2008): 2.

4. Giselle ou Les Wilis, Ballet Fantastique en deux actes. Facsimile der Notation von Henri Justamant aus den 1860er Jahren (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2008).