Percy Matenko Collection

The bulk of the materials relate to research that Matenko conducted for a publication of correspondence between Rahel and Karl August Varnhagen von Ense and the family of Rahel's brother, Ludwig Robert and consist primarily of notes, photocopies, and drafts of this edition. Although Matenko completed a larger draft of an edition of this correspondence, all that seems to have actually reached publication is a small sampling in an article entitled "New light on Rahel Varnhagen's biography: some hitherto unpublished letters"; which appeared in the volume Studies in German literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; festschrift for Frederic E. Coenen. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1970. p. 35-46. An offprint of this article appears in box 3, folder ten. Other notes and research materials from this collection seem to have been used to write the article "Ludwig Tieck and Rahel Varnhagen: a re-examination." Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, January 1975; 20: 225 - 246. In consideration of the fact that many of the letters which he transcribed and translated may still remain unpublished, some of the drafts of the edition of Varnhagen-Robert correspondence may be of great value. The seventh series, correspondence, documents the process of Matenko working with LBI on this project, as well as his attempts to borrow books and track down Varnhagen's correspondence. Of particular interest is his correspondence with the descendents of the Feilchenfeldt family and various European rare book and manuscript dealers.

Other than the correspondence, none of the research notes, drafts, or photocopies are dated. Based on the correspondence, however, it seems as though most of the research notes, photocopies, and drafts date from roughly the same time period. Accordingly, they have all been assigned the generic date: circa 1964-1974. The arrangement follows that of an earlier inventory. Correspondence originally found among the research notes has been added to the correspondence files.