On a happier note: If the information which I have received is correct: IMO The Warburg Institute made a really excellent choice when selecting it's new director!

There are now fears that the University plans to move the Warburg’s library from its building in Woburn Square and put it with its own library in its headquarters. In 2007 it squeezed the Warburg by raising its space charge by £500,000, which eats up half the Institute’s £1.3m annual grant so that it now has an annual deficit of half a million. Jill Kraye, the Institute’s librarian and a historian of philosophy, says, “They charge us eight times more for being an open access library”, and yet the whole point of Aby Warburg’s original conception was to be able to browse among the books.

The University is also trying to curtail the Warburg’s independence after “converging” the administration of the Warburg library into London Research Library Services, which will be appointing the Warburg’s next librarian, who will no longer be a scholar-librarian, as has been the case from Fritz Saxl onwards. There is no money to appoint a successor to the head of the Warburg’s photographic archive, the essential complement to the books in the integrated Warburgian approach to ideas. Currently, its head is Liz McGrath, the award-winning author of Rubens, Subjects from History.

Another sign of the Warburg’s diminished independence is that the Institute itself was not represented on the board to appoint the successor to the current director, Charles Hope, although a descendant of the Warburg family was included. At this rate, there could soon be nothing left of the Warburg except a few Fellows detached from the library that not only gave birth to the Institute but is at the heart of what makes it such an influential and civilising place.

All this suggests that the University does not acknowledge its obligations under the 1944 trust deed, but what is almost more serious is that in its bureaucratic way the University seems to have lost sight of the human reality of what makes a place of learning and intellectual creativity. Administrative synergies will not do it; money and a fine building do not necessarily do it, as the Getty Research Institute has shown. Despite all its facilities, that has never stirred people’s minds much or aroused affection.

Instead of this sad and unedifying state of conflict, the University could cut the charge to the Warburg, recognise its own obligations and the Warburg’s unique characteristics, and collaborate with the Institute on a long-term plan for its future in its own building. This certainty would make it possible for the Warburg to launch an international search for the endowment funding that would enable it to carry on its extraordinary work.

The alternative looks increasingly unattractive. The Warburg, supported by its Advisory Council, has taken legal advice and has been told that the University is in breach of the 1944 trust deed, but the University wants to apply to the Charity Commissioners to amend the terms of the deed. Director Charles Hope points out that if they succeed in this, it would not only be the death of the Institute, but also of the library, half of whose acquisitions currently come through the Warburg’s endowment income, gifts and exchanges (for example, the De Menil family gave it 30 years worth of material about the “image of the black” in art).

The Warburg family is getting angry. Max Warburg, the banker son of Eric Warburg, who signed the 1944 trust deed making the donation, told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung last month that the family would do everything possible in law to compel the University to honour the trust deed, which guarantees the Warburg’s independence and independent financing. “The whole thing is a scandal,” he said.

If the Univ. of London has compromised its stewardship of the library, can the trust deed be revoked and the library be returned to the Warburg family in Hamburg. could a benefactor be found in a German university?

Dear Colleagues and Friends,Many thanks for your support. The Warburg Institute is currently in discussion about the way forward. We will keep you informed; but for the time being, please hold your fire.

Found thanks to The Warburg Institute's presence on facebook:
Anthony Grafton & Jeffrey Hamburger: Save the Warburg Library! (2010-09-01).

There you can read i.a.:
Quote:

...
Quote:


Well, in this case there is no such thing as "the German authorities": the universities are under the authority of the federal states where they are situated, and of the 16 federal states of Germany I guess some 3 (maybe even more) might perhaps be potentially interested to integrate the Warburg Institute into one of their universities or other research institutions (or - less probable IMO - to support it as an independent institution):

• Hamburg (because the Warburg library was founded there)
  
• Niedersachsen (because they have the Herzog August Bibliothek there, which has a focus on rinascimental topics and has rather good holdings from and on that period).
  
• Bayern/Bavaria (i.a. because Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich has several institutions with a focus on the topics investigated by the Warburg Institute, like e.g. the Zentrum für Mittelalter- und Renaissancestudien (ZMR) and our own institution {and: rather nearby Augsburg university's Institut für Europäische Kulturgeschichte}; and because Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB) is one of the libraries with the most ample holdings from and on the middle ages and the renaissance and the holdings of Munich university library from and on these periods are definitely above average too).
  

An other option might be to try to transfer the Warburg Institute as one of the humanities oriented institutes of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft.
Or as a member institute of the Leibniz Gemeinschaft.

However: to make negotiations (including "pre-negotiations") about any such solution possible the Warburg Institute would have to take the initiative and express its interest in a re-transfer to Germany. And as of now I doubt this will happen (the Warburg Institute has become a rather English institution by now IMO); but perhaps it did already happen, and I just don't know about it?

If the University of London insists on following these examples of academic malfeasance, perhaps the German authorities can find the means to bring the Warburg back to its original home. That would certainly be preferable to watching as philistines demolish a great European institution.

Letters

Move the Warburg to L.A.? October 14, 2010

'Move the Warburg to L.A.?' has not been published yet.

In regards to the uncertain future of the Warburg Library, Mary Garrard offers the following information (posted on the caah listserv) . . .

There exists a group called the American Friends of the Warburg Institute (AFWI), which solicits and accepts contributions to support the Warburg Library. On September 28, their board voted to help substantially defray the costs of legal procedures to keep the Warburg Institute from being subsumed into the general London University Library system.

<...>
By now the text has been published:
Move the Warburg to L.A.? (Ingrid D. Rowland, reply by Anthony Grafton and Jeffrey Hamburger)

Rowland writes i.a.:
Quote:

...
Quote:



<...>

"Forscher kamen so allein durch das Betrachten der Titel und das Schmökern am Regal assoziativ auf Zusammenhänge, die durch systematisches Arbeiten mit Katalogen und schon gar nicht durch Googeln zu erschließen sind", sagt Bernd Roeck, Professor für Geschichte der Neuzeit an der Uni Zürich. Roeck arbeitete einst am Warburg Institute in London und bekleidet im nächsten Jahr wahrscheinlich die Warburg-Professur in Hamburg, er sagt: "Die Uni London versichert die Unabhängigkeit des Instituts auch bei einer Eingliederung in die eigene Bibliothek - da stellt sich die Frage, was eine Veränderung des Istzustands überhaupt bringt."

Nicht weniger dramatisch klingt Max Warburg, Direktor des Bankhauses, wenn er die Pläne der Londoner Universität als einen "Skandal" bezeichnet. Es war schließlich sein eigener Vater, Eric Warburg, der im November 1944 die Schenkung durch einen Vertrag besiegelte. "Und aus dem ursprünglichen Vertrag geht eindeutig hervor, dass das Institut selbstständig bleiben soll und auch selbstständig zu finanzieren ist. Ich bin sehr enttäuscht über die jetzige Diskussion, die Familie Warburg wird rechtlich alles unternehmen, um dagegen vorzugehen und das jetzige Vorhaben zu verhindern."

Beide Seiten, sowohl das Warburg Institute in London wie auch die dortige Universität, beraten sich derzeit mit ihren Anwälten. "Ein bisschen erinnert diese Geschichte ans Altonaer Museum - erst wird die Schließung verkündet, dann stellt man fest: Das geht rechtlich gar nicht."

Um die Schließung zu ermöglichen, müssten die im Schenkungsvertrag von 1944 genannten Bedingungen verändert werden - das ginge allerdings nur, wenn die Universität glaubhaft machen könnte, dass diese Bedingungen nicht mehr zeitgemäß sind.