Bayreuth Wagner Archive becomes accessible online
With a three-year digitization project, the Bayreuth Wagner Archive wants to ensure the protection of its holdings and their long-term preservation. Over 16,000 documents from the estate of Richard and Cosima Wagner are also to be made generally accessible via the Internet.
The aim of the digitization project is to enable researchers and interested parties to access the archive holdings via the website of the Richard Wagner Museum Bayreuth from anywhere in the world with Internet access. The documents in the archive can be researched online according to various aspects such as author, date or place of origin and displayed on the screen as high-resolution color scans.
Now that preparatory work has been completed, digitization and indexing in the database are being tackled: The original handwritten letters of Cosima and, above all, Richard Wagner, as well as his notebooks and the fair copies of his scores, are currently being digitized as a core part of the archive holdings. The digital copies will then be entered into the museum's own database, thus creating the basis for their online presentation.
The National Archives in Bayreuth hold and look after the world's largest collection of archival records relating to the Leipzig-born composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883), his second wife Cosima (1837-1930) and their descendants.
