Alban and Helene Berg’s library at Trauttmansdorffgasse contains approx. 3,500 books, music scores, journals, brochures and other documents from the 18th to 20th centuries, although most of these originated during Alban Berg’s lifetime (1885–1935). Numerous volumes are annotated with extensive handwritten comments and other markings that were added while reading and serve as evidence that the reader was taking a close interest – also in connection with the composition of his works. Innumerable inserts – bookmarks, pictures or newspaper clippings – indicate that the books were used extremely frequently and create additional contexts and interconnections.
Besides a broad interest in classics like Beethoven and Wagner, but also contemporaries such as Krenek, Mahler, Pfitzner, Schönberg, Schreker, Richard Strauss and Zemlinsky as documented by the music scores, the literary volumes bear witness to an unusually varied range of interests, such as in Henrik Ibsen, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and August Strindberg. Editions of works by Peter Altenberg, Georg Büchner, Gerhart Hauptmann and Frank Wedekind, which Berg used or intended to use as texts for compositions, as well as a well-thumbed edition of the encyclopaedia Meyers Konversationslexikon with a remarkably large number of traces left by its use, are especially insightful.
The planned digitization of Alban and Helene Berg’s library, which can only be undertaken after extensive restoration owing to the condition and age of the media, is designed to reflect the diverse nature of its content in several respects:
Contact: office@albanbergstiftung.at