The Prof. Dr. Kurt Hirche Collection

In the summer of 1986, Professor Dr. Kurt Hirche was so generous as to leave his extensive collection of brochures, periodicals and newspapers to the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. This valuable historic, political, literary, and art historical collection was added to the FES Library, catalogued and thus made available to all interested users, as was Kurt Hirche's wish. Museums, art associations and similar institutions devoted to matters of cultural policy were granted the right to borrow exhibits for shows and presentations.

Thus, the Hirche collection became the largest and most valuable individual collection under the care of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation. A large number of exhibitions was stocked from the Hirche stores and met with great success even outside of Bonn:

• "Workers' Education and culture in Saxony and Thuringia"
• "Expressionism and Workers' Culture", "Revolutionaries of the Mind"
• "The Youth Movement and Democratic Socialism"
• "Expressionism in Northern Germany"
• "Expressionism in Southern Germany"

All these exhibitions reflected the uniqueness and the breadth of the collection.

The collection was catalogued and indexed in the Friedrich Ebert Foundation Library. Its stock record contains some 5,700 entries and was published in 2000 under the following title:
Dokumentation der Sammlung Prof. Dr. Kurt Hirche in der Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung / [bearb. Von Angela Rinschen ...]. - Bonn, 2000. - 563 S. : Ill.

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