Heidelberg Accession Index (HAI): Accession Books and Inventories of German Collections and Museums

Inventory records and accession books reflect the changing structure of collections and the acquisition strategies of public museums. Over decades – or sometimes even over centuries – they provide first-hand information about previous ownership and acquisition conditions, later losses and relocations, as well as about finds, purchases and donations. These volumes, most of which are handwritten, are therefore a central primary source.

The (hi)stories of objects and collections have gained new interest and significance in recent years. This is largely due to the many challenges and new approaches to provenance research, museology, ‘object studies’, etc., but also to the new possibilities that the digital indexing and networking of the relevant, sometimes very heterogeneous materials and sources now open up: sales and auction catalogues, access books and inventories, photo documentations, publications, correspondence and catalogues can be comprehensively merged and thus the ‘network’ of object movements, actors and references can be developed and reconstructed in a density that has not been possible until now.

Heidelberg University Library is expanding its existing “German Sales”, service to include the ‘Heidelberg Accession Index (HAI): accession books and inventories of German collections and museums’. The research perspective opened up there on commercial auction and sales catalogues is now being expanded to include a view of institutional documentation and the acquisition strategies of public collections and museums. The goal is to make a significant contribution to a comprehensive investigation of the provenance of artworks, collections and actors in the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany and beyond. Making the information available in digital form facilitates collaborative analysis of the information from various transdisciplinary perspectives.

The starting point for the new service, which is still under construction and aims to provide the broadest possible coverage of digitally available access books and inventories of German collections and museums, are the approximately 1,000 acquisition books of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (SMB) from the years 1650 to 2010. They are still used today to document the holdings of the SMB‘s 15 collections and reflect the eventful history of Berlin's museums, their holdings and their development. Since 2014, new additions to the collections have been documented in electronic form. The digitisation took place between 2019 and 2022 as part of the research project „Provenance and Holdings. Online Publication of the Acquisition Books of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin“.

The Berlin acquisition books – around 650 volumes are already online here – are supplemented by the inventory books of the LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the Städtisches Museum Göttingen, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, the library of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, the Badisches Landesmuseums Karlsruhe and the University of Heidelberg. Further holdings are in preparation. And, of course, we are always happy to hear about further collaborations – please feel free to contact us!