Family Archives Research Articles

New Paths for Exploring ‘History from Below’: Microhistorical Documentaries

This article proposes a specific category of documentaries that adopt a unique approach to explore the past, and which are referred to here as “microhistorical documentaries.” These films fall within the basic parameters of written microhistory, a historiographical trend that emerged in the 1970s under the broader umbrella of “history from below.” Those parameters include a reduced scale of observation, a central role given to human agency, a conjectural approach to archival research, and a reliance on narrative structures. But microhistorical documentaries also exhibit specific traits of their own, such as underscoring the affective dimension, using autobiographical and essayistic perspectives, drawing on the protagonists’ personal memories to reconstruct the past, and using family archives (mainly snapshots and home movies). Films of this kind therefore differ markedly from the informational/expository model of the conventional historical documentary, sharing features with a certain type of contemporary documentary, with some traits that can be linked to a postmodern sensibility.

Rome, 10 December 1696, a symbolic funeral: decorations placed in the Polish church of St Stanislaus to commemorate the death of John III Sobieski

The Church of St Stanislaus the Bishop and Martyr in Rome is the national church of Poland, where the funeral ceremonies of Polish rulers were celebrated. After the death of King John III Sobieski, ceremonial symbolic obsequies were held. Carlo Barberini, as cardinal protector of Poland, organized public and expensive ceremonies to properly honour the king’s death. The course of the funeral service and the funeral decoration are known in detail through three contemporary printed reports and an engraving describing every aspect of the ceremony and the decoration of the church in honour of the Polish king. The church was decorated with six painted medallions celebrating important events in the life of King John III Sobieski. The surviving four of the six medallions are now kept at the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Antica in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome. In 2018, researcher Giovan Battista Fidanza found documents in the Barberini family archives regarding the cost of the ceremony. According to sources, the artist who made the six funerary oval paintings was Giacomo Wernele, which indicates an Italianization of the name Philip Jakob Wörndle. Currently, the state of preservation of the oval funerary canvases is poor. It is imperative to preserve the paintings in order to save them from destruction and make them available for museum display.

Turgot’s missing manuscripts – partially recovered

Since 2015 it has become clear that various manuscripts that once belonged to the Turgot family archive are missing. This paper reports on the recent recovery in Japan of photographs of some of these manuscripts and presents a case study of the images of the famous draft known as Valeurs et monnaies. It allows one to appreciate the practices of previous editors of Turgot’s writings as well as the writing process of the author.

История одной немецкой семьи (по материалам семейного архива)

The article is devoted to the history of the mono-ethnic German family. The article is based on the materials of the family archive, which was created thanks to the commemorative practices of the representatives of the family. Interesting facts and discrepancies in archival documents were revealed. The history of the family is known from the 18th century, when their ancestors moved from Swabia to Russia in 1765 under the influence of the Manifestos of Catherine II. In the 1930s–1940s members of the family experienced tragic events that many German families had to go through. This period is represented by the largest number of materials. The main purpose of creating an archive is to perpetuate the memory of the history of the family for posterity.

METHODS AND EVALUATION IN THE HISTORICAL MAPPING OF CITIES

Abstract. Through a (re)mapping and spatial modeling of a city’s past, exploratory web applications can be built to examine urban histories and dynamically engage scholars and the public. Working on Emory University’s OpenWorld Atlanta project (OWA), researchers used geospatial technologies and methods to extract data from archives and other sources to build historical data models, geodatabases, and geocoders that enabled the development of web-based dynamic map interfaces. With a focus on the early stages of urban development of the city of Atlanta in the southeastern United States, this platform provides exploratory visualizations of city history along with a wealth of detail for specific time periods, specifically circa 1878 and 1928, given the opportunity provides by key map publications of the city. These dynamically enabled historical maps were then connected to digital images, geospatial vector data, descriptive text, and labels and then structured in a content management system.While this project began as a digitization project centered on two atlases in the Rose Library collection at Emory University, it has grown to include contributors from several partner institutions. Therefore, this paper outlines the OWA project within a larger consortium of institutions and researchers focusing on production methods, platform development, interface design, and evaluation using open-data and open-source methods and software in cities' historical mapping and modeling. Drawing upon historical maps, city directories, archival collections, newspapers, and census data, projects like OWA allow researchers to analyze spatially grounded questions. In addition, they may serve the public as a valuable informational resource to learn about their neighborhood’s past and even contribute materials from family archives or stories.

Pre-revolutionary Childhood in the Texts of Habib Zaini, Tatar Teacher of the Soviet Era

They were representatives of the Tatar intelligentsia, born in the 1880-90s. The pre-revolutionary world with the unique urban everyday life of the early 20th century was already lost, but it occupied a central place in the Tatar memoirs of that period. Memoirs and other records of a native of the city of Troitsk, Orenburg province, teacher Habib Zaini (1890-1967) also continue this trend. In his notes, he wrote about his native city of Troitsk and its inhabitants. In the article, we analyze the materials that the author donated to the Lobachevsky Scientific Library of Kazan University in 1967 and notebooks with memories from his family archive. “Family” and “public” memoirs differed in the style of presentation, in the second version the author used formulaic expressions and famous names more often. These ego-documents allowed us to identify several dominants of the “pre-revolutionary world” of Habib Zaini: family ties, the mahalla (Muslim community) and hometown, the clash of traditions and innovations at the turn of the 19-20th centuries. Ego-documents include two layers - the mythologized world of the 1870-80s and the childhood world of the hero of the 1890s, which are united by the place of action and actors. The author of the memoirs received a special education in his family, one of his results is the creation of such a text.

Photos from the Family Archive of N.V. Sergeev as a Source on Water Transport in Sarapul

Photos from the Family Archive of N.V. Sergeev as a Source on Water Transport in Sarapul

Photos from the Family Archive of I.G. Novgorodtsev as a Source about the Perm Paramilitary Fire Department and the Steamship “Groza”

Photos from the Family Archive of I.G. Novgorodtsev as a Source about the Perm Paramilitary Fire Department and the Steamship “Groza”

Nicola Guerra (1865–1842) at the Budapest Opera: A Crucial Turning Point for Hungarian Ballet

This study aims to investigate the contribution that the Italian maestro Nicola Guerra brought to the Budapest Opera House Ballet (from 1902 to 1915), founding a corps de ballet capable of competing with the best corps de ballet of other international theatres and endowing the theatre with a consistent and valuable number of choreographies, some of which were performed even after Guerra had left Hungary. It also aims to investigate the transnational career of a choreographer in the early twentieth century, exploring the circulation of mindsets in a range of dance concepts. The investigation explores first-hand sources, many of which come from the Guerra family archives, dwelling also on the notations transcribed by the maestro himself, in particular of the ballet Havasi Gyopár (Edelweiss), which allow us to draw with some reliability on his compositional style that was particularly fruitful in choreographies for large groups.

Erna Eckstein-Schlossmann’s exile years in Turkey, 1935–1950: a biographical and gendered approach to migration history

ABSTRACT Erna Eckstein-Schlossmann (1895–1998) and Albert Eckstein (1891–1950), a pediatrician couple from Düsseldorf, had to hand in their official resignations after being declared as ‘Jews’ according to the laws of 1933 and 1935. Albert Eckstein accepted the offer of the Turkish government to become the head of the pediatric clinic of Ankara Hospital. Relying on a biographical approach and utilizing ego-documents, such as memoirs, letters, and travelogues at the Eckstein family archives, together with Turkish state archives, and Erna Eckstein-Schlossmann’s research publications, this paper conceptualizes Erna’s exile years in Turkey along gendered lines and provides an intersectional interpretation of migration. This microhistorical reconstruction acknowledges her agency and subjectivity as a high-skilled migrant woman; intertwines her life story with the larger dynamics of the migrant networks in Turkey; and brings it into dialogue with macro-level structural factors with regards to the war, the mass murder and the global movement of European Jews.

Remediating family memories of Italian colonialism: Beyond the Frame as process and product

The article analyzes Beyond the Frame ( Oltre i bordi, 2023), a film based on Simone Brioni's fortuitous discovery of a family archive: a box of photographs taken in Italian East Africa in the 1930s by a distant relative. Beyond the Frame discusses colonial photography and visuality, as well as the material legacies of that past, challenging the gaze through which they framed the subjective and collective idea of Africa in Italian society. The article is divided into two parts, each of which discusses colonial photography and how Beyond the Frame observes, interprets, and reflects on how the legacy of colonialism shapes our present. In the first part, Brioni traces the process that led to the construction of a narrative that interweaves personal reflections and collective history. In the second part, Gianmarco Mancosu draws upon Ann Laura Stoler's work to discuss how the colonial archive and the remains of empire fashion our present, with a particular emphasis on photography and on colonial traces in the Italian cityscape. The article shows how the film works with as well as against the archive: how it enacts a process of resignification, thus modifying the original meaning of colonial pictures.

Fal'sifikaciya kupecheskih dnevnikov v nachale XX v.: tvorcheskaya laboratoriya G.T. Polilova i publikaciya dokumentov iz semejnogo arhiva

The article is devoted to cases of falsification of autobiographical monuments in pre-revolutionary Russia. On the example of the literary work of Georgy Tikhonovich Polilov (Severtsev), the appeal of the writer of the early 20th century to the history of his merchant family in the first half of the 19th century is considered. The writer published several diaries and memoirs of his ancestors, the manuscripts of which he, according to him, found in the family archive. A detailed analysis of the texts of the published monuments allowed us to conclude that they are falsifications, and not literary treatments of actually existing notes.

Becoming Elizabeth

Abstract In the late eighteenth century, a Mughal woman named Sharaf un-Nisa lived with and bore children by the first Company Supervisor of Purnea. She followed him to Britain, changed her name to Elizabeth, and converted to Christianity. Cohabitations between native women and British East India Company servants were common. While scholars have attempted to compensate for the notorious dearth of information about these native women’s lives by reading East India Company archives, material evidence of this woman’s life lends insight to the embodied process of Anglicization. This article supplements existing research on native consorts with consideration of a family archive to consider the subjectivity of Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa as a process of transformation characterized by hybridity. This argument proceeds by a textual material analysis of a diverse range of materials from a family archive, including eighteenth and early nineteenth century private correspondence in English and Persian, as well as material analysis of paintings, jewelry, textiles, and a penmanship book.

Information Practices of University’s Civil Servants in Managing Family Archives for Asset Declarations

PurposeThis study aims to elaborate on the information practices carried out by university’s civil servants in managing and preparing family archives for asset declaration purposes by applying a theory of everyday information practices. This study uses McKenzie’s two-dimensional model which consists of Active Seeking, Active Scanning, Non-directed Monitoring, and By Proxy modes, along with the Connecting and Interacting phases in each mode. MethodThis study is a descriptive qualitative study and utilizes the data analysis method. Research data was collected through semi-structured online interviews. The informants were selected based on purposive sampling. Results/FindingsThe results of this study indicate that only three modes of information practices were applied by the university’s civil servants for asset declaration purposes. The three modes are Active Seeking, Active Scanning, and By Proxy. ConclusionInformation practices for archive management are a part of daily life. It cannot be separated from context such as the type of archive and for what purpose. It is clear that archival study is related to information practices.

Representar al líder. La correspondencia de Alberto Iturbe y el análisis de los intermediarios de Perón en el exilio

The paper analyzes the epistolary exchange between Perón and Alberto Iturbe, personal delegate of the former president (1962-1965) and central figure of “political” Peronism in the sixties. It is a little-known reservoir, composed by unpublished material consulted in Iturbe’s family archive. By crossing this documentation and that available in the public funds that preserve the former president’s epistolary, the paper explores the possibilities offered by the Perón/Iturbe correspondence to inquire about Peronism in exile.

From Archive to Print

Abstract Monica Petzal is an artist, curator and writer with a particular interest in her German-Jewish background. Trained as a painter and art historian, she became a printmaker in mid-career, enabling her to explore more fully a rich family archive of images, texts and objects. In this article she explores the connection between the writing of Victor Klemperer and her maternal family in Dresden before the Second World War, her family archive and the artwork produced for two exhibitions, Indelible Marks – The Dresden Project in 2013–14 and Dissent and Displacement in 2020.

Archive Album and Other Images

Archive/ Album and Other Images (2022 36’) is an autoethnographic artist film that asks of questions of the encounter with a family archive and its relation to the current time. In this way the relationship between the archive and the future (Derrida) and social construction of the photographic event can inform an investigation of the intersection of biography and visualisation.

Exhibitions on Soviet Repressions at the Moscow NGO Memorial (2011–2021): Transforming Family Memory into Cultural Memory

ABSTRACT The article analyzes the curation of the history of Soviet repressions at the temporary exhibitions organized by the International Memorial NGO in Moscow from 2011 to 2021. Compared with other Russian museums, Memorial relies mainly on family archives and family memories. The repressions are treated as a collective experience that affected not only victims, those executed or imprisoned, but also their relatives and descendants. Seen from this perspective, the carceral past is directly linked to today’s population. The article explores the various ways in which Memorial draws on families’ memories of repression to create a museum statement.

A Seventeenth-Century Manuscript of the Academic Drama Lingua

Abstract This article explores a previously unknown manuscript of the anonymous academic drama Lingua. Housed in the Bridgeman family archives in Staffordshire Record Office, the manuscript is similar but by no means identical to the 1607 printed edition. I examine the manuscript’s possible provenance, its distinctive features and key variants (including its attention to act music), before focusing on two substantial original passages. Both of these episodes demonstrate a clear satirical interest in Wales, recycling as they do various Welsh stereotypes common in professional drama of the early seventeenth century. I argue that these sections—which also bear the mark of an engagement with Spenser and Rabelais—enrich our understanding not only of Lingua but of the links between university drama and wider literary and theatrical cultures. I conclude that these sections are likely authorial, and that Thomas Tomkis (to whom the play is usually attributed) may well have contributed to or overseen the production of the manuscript.

Genetic and genealogical (genealogical) study of the genus Nilogovoi (based on the DNA of autosomes)

The article deals with the problem of genetic and genealogical (genealogical) verification of the documentary pedigree of the Nilogovs, reconstructed by the methods of classical genealogy. Thanks to the testing of male and female representatives of the genus Nilogov on the DNA of autosomes, it was possible to genealogically confirm the documentary pedigree of the author of the article to his direct ancestor Semyon Danilovich Nilogov, who lived in the XVIII century. The object of study is the biological pedigree of the Nilogovs, and the subject is the archival and documentary reconstruction of the pedigree of the Nilogovs before the XVIII century. The source base of the work was the collections of such archives as: the State Archive of the Perm Territory, the Komi-Permyatsky District State Archive, the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, the archive of the city of Minusinsk; personal archives of several Nilogov families were also used. The novelty of the work is the application of modern genetic and genealogical methodology for the objectification of a specific documentary pedigree by certifying biological kinship in the "descendant – ancestor" chain. Specifically, the genetic relationship of two distant relatives N. A. Nelogov and R. A. Arinicheva was studied at the level of the sixth degree. Thanks to testing of autosomal DNA of these donors, it was possible to identify their common nucleotide segments (text sequences in the form of nitrogenous bases), after which, using the statistical database of genetic kinship, The Shared cM Project 4.0., it was possible to confirm the documented reconstructed pedigree. The introduction of modern methods of molecular genetics (biological science) into scientific genealogy (historical science) is an actual trend of systemic (interdisciplinary) research.