Silbermann manuscripts available digitally
Following the acquisition of a travel diary by Johann Andreas Silbermann, the SLUB Dresden has purchased further key manuscripts by the Strasbourg organ builder and nephew of Gottfried Silbermann.
The so-called Silbermann archive, which was compiled between the 1720s and 1780s, is a treasure trove for culture and science and documents the family's knowledge of organ building. Johann Andreas Silbermann compiled descriptions in his own hand of 35 organs built by his father, Andreas Silbermann, who originally came from Saxony, described 31 instruments that he had built himself and compiled details of almost 250 instruments from all over Europe.
A Silbermann diary, a notebook richly decorated with drawings and newspaper clippings, was already auctioned by the SLUB at Sotheby's in 2014. In it, Johann Andreas Silbermann describes a round trip in 1741 that took him from Strasbourg via Frankfurt through the central German residential cities to Berlin and back.
The documents are available online at www.slubdd.de/silbermannarchiv
