ResearchKOLK 17 is a research-based cultural institution

Archive / Documents and Graphics / VDP Play Archive

The archive of KOLK 17 houses documents, biography’s, play texts, photos and audio tapes of various puppeteer dynasties whose estates have been incorporated into the collection. In addition, the house archive maps the history of the puppet theatre institutions in the Kolk. Since 2016, the play archive of the Verband deutscher Puppentheater e.V. (Association of German Puppet Theatres) has also been part of the library. (vdp) has also been part of KOLK 17’s specialist library.

KOLK 17’s specialist library consists mainly of older literature up until around 1980. Recently, however, the library has been systematically supplemented with new publications; gaps are being filled. In 2015 we joined the Common Library Network (GBV) (library code 4009) and entered approx. 3000 titles into the Common Union Catalogue (GVK)

KOLK 17 collects in a process-oriented manner. The focus of the collection is not on individual puppets but on the entire creative process, encompassing everything produced in the preparation, promotion, execution, recording, and reception of puppet theater performances. This includes drafts and sketches (for puppets, costumes, stage design, etc.), director’s books, scripts, sheet music, tickets, promotional materials, playbills, puppets, stage constructions, stage elements, props, musical instruments, and arrangements used in performances, as well as photographs and video/audio recordings of performances.

Do you own puppets, props, playbills, scripts, or other items relevant to the history of puppet theater? Consider contributing your treasures to the KOLK 17 collection.

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Online Collection

Since the beginning of 2020, staff from the Collection & Science department have been working intensively on a system that will make the collection, which consists of an amalgamation of approximately 20,000 artefacts, accessible through a pragmatic administration with ‘controlled’ terminologies.  The aim is to create a digital research infrastructure that will also be available as an online collection for external international users.

How do we want to deal with unclear object Biographies?

The archives of museums are not only places where objects are stored. They are spaces of knowledge and repositories of cultural heritage. We would like to open up the KOLK 17 collection to a diverse range of experts in order to re-examine the ‘stored knowledge’ surrounding the objects in the collection. Especially in the case of objects of ‘non-European provenance’, we would like to critically reflect on previous scholarly  knowledge by examining the processes of separation from their cultural context and their subsequent classification . Researching the object biographies is central for us. This includes actively contacting the respective artists or players or their descendants as well as networking with scholars from the respective communities of origin. We work transparently and (self-)critically; disclosing unresolved object provenances and knowledge gaps.