Collections
Our archive primarily houses donated collections from private individuals (we ourselves have limited resources for targeted acquisitions). These collections vary in size. Only a few larger collections and their respective donors are listed here. In addition, we regularly receive small donations which we greatly appreciate, but whose generous donors we cannot list in detail because there are too many of them and the relevant information is partly not (or no longer) available. Here is a small selection of people who have entrusted us with their private collections:
Klaus Kuhnke (1944-1988), Manfred Miller (1943-2021) & Peter Schulze (b. 1947)
The three music journalists and archive founders together donated about 40,000 sound carriers as well as countless magazines, books and information materials from their private possessions and thus formed the basis for today's KKI
Wolfgang Frickenhaus (deceased, singer as well as managing director and producer of the Dortmund publishing house/record label "pläne")
Vinyl records, CDs and literature from the left-wing political repertoire of the pläne publishing house / label; songwriters such as Hannes Wader as well as world music
Holm Günther (born 1956, politician and former mayor of the city of Crimmitschau/Thuringia)
Large James Last collection; all of the artist's recordings (especially records) as well as numerous books, newspaper articles and memorabilia on the subject of James Last
Günter R. Meier (1943-?, deceased, financial administrator, private collector and semi-professional guitarist from Bremen)
Vinyl records, CDs, DVDs and books; focus: the electric guitar in jazz (but also in blues and rock)
Günter R. Meier in front of his collection in 2010
Mohns Mohnssen (1937-2021, accountant, nurse and private collector from Bremen)
Focus: Country Music; circa 8,000 vinyl records and 3,000 CDs and magazines
Raymond Pollex (deceased, private collector from Hamburg, no occupation given)
Approximately 7,000 vinyl LPs and singles; focus: 1960s and 70s, especially beat, progressive rock and krautrock
Hans-Henning Rabe (deceased, music editor at Saarländischer Rundfunk in Saarbrücken)
Approximately 2,000 rock and jazz albums on vinyl
Tobias Stalling (media educator from Bremen)
Focus: local, national and international punk and post-punk tradition in the period from 1990 to 2020; approx. 5,000 CDs, DVDs and VHS tapes as well as several hundred fanzines, magazines and books; some material on jazz, hip-hop, electronic dance music as well as classic and progressive rock (e.g. complete record collection of the band King Crimson)
Werner Voss (1941-2013, administrator and radio host with his own show called "Rock 'n' Roll Museum" from 1974-2013)
Focus: 1940s-1960s, especially rock 'n' roll and specifically Hamburg Star Club; recordings (especially single vinyl records), magazines, club bulletins, literature and memorabilia
Dr. Ingolf Wachler (1911-1988, folklorist and first jazz editor at Radio Bremen)
Approximately 7,000 vinyl and shellac records with (early) jazz music, books and broadcasting manuscripts
Catalogs & Directories
Here we provide you with our three online catalogs or OPACs for 1)sound carriers, 2) books and 3) journal articles, which can already be found on the Internet since 1995 (!). We are currently in the process of revising these catalogs, bringing them up to date with the latest technology and making them more user-friendly.
In principle, the online catalogs are well filled with records, but they do not (yet) by far contain all the media units we have in the archive. We are working daily to further fill the OPACs and to ensure data quality.
If you do not find certain media units you are looking for in one of the three OPACs, please feel free to write to us by email. Sometimes we can help and provide the materials you are looking for anyway. This is especially true for our periodicals (journals & magazines). We keep these in a separate directory, which is currently not yet accessible online.
Catalog of sound carriers ... here you can search for all kinds of sound carriers (vinyl records, CDs etc.)
Books Catalog ... here you can search for books of all kinds (monographs, anthologies etc.)
Magazine Articles Catalog ... here you can search for magazine articles about specific bands and musicians
Services
We offer you a range of services. As a non-profit limited liability company, we are required to charge fees for these services in order to maintain our resources and quality of service. Our fees do not cover costs, but generate additional funds to our base budget. We use these funds specifically to further develop our collections and our spatial and technical infrastructure. Fees are not used for personnel costs.
User fees for the archive
... for students, teachers and staff of the University of the Arts Bremen the use of the archive is free of charge!
... for regular, external users
Day ticket: 5 €
Week ticket: 20 €
Monthly ticket: 50 €
Half-year ticket: 150 €
Annual ticket: 250 €
... for persons entitled to a discount with corresponding ID (pupils, trainees, students, unemployed)
Day ticket: 2,50 €
Week ticket: 10 €
Monthly ticket: 25 €
Half-year ticket: 75 €
Annual ticket: 125 €
Self-made digital copies on site:
free of charge
Digital copies by us on remote request (email or phone):
of a magazine article or a book essay: 10 €
of one sound carrier (vinyl, cassette, CD), including cover and booklet scans: 25 €
Research fees - We will do the research for you in our archive holdings!
from 25 € per hour; maximum 100 € for a specific research request per day
The procedure:
1) You write us an email with a specific research request.
2) We will respond to you promptly by email, estimate the research effort and provide you with a cost estimate.
3) You reply to our email, agree to the estimate (if you wish) and thus place a research order with us.
4) We will reply to you and ask you to transfer the estimated research fees (between 25 € and 100 €) to our account in advance. Attached to this email we will send you a legally binding invoice, which also contains our bank details.
5) You will make the transfer.
6) Once we receive your referral, we will do the research for you.
7) The results of our research will be communicated to you by email. Scans or other files will be sent to you either as an email attachment or - for large files - via "WeTransfer", a third-party provider that is free of charge for you. There are no additional costs for scans or other digital files.
Group tours for tourists (up to a maximum of 15 people)
25 € per group for a 45-minute multimedia guided tour of the archive
Group tours for school classes (up to a maximum of 25 children and teenagers)
15 € per group for a 45-minute multimedia guided tour of the archive
Thematic presentations to the public (outside the archive/institute or the UA Bremen)
150 € for a multimedia, science-based presentation on a specific topic (approx. 30 minutes);
100 € per hour for a theme-related event for which we compile music and present it appropriately (moderation, possibly PowerPoint) > Exemplary theme: "The theme of food in popular music - from the archive to the (record) plate"
Donate or Inherit Materials
In principle, we are interested in accepting donated or inherited materials. However, we do not accept everything. Only after thorough examination or comparison with our holdings do we consider integrating them into our archive.
You have a music collection and want to give it into trustworthy hands? The reasons for this can be many: lack of space, weariness, a move is coming up and you want to get rid of ballast, or you have found a new love and no longer have time for your passion for collecting. Please feel free to contact us. Together we will weigh up whether we are the right partner institution for you.
There is also the possibility that you bequeath your collection to us. This way you can enjoy your collection during your lifetime and secure it for posterity. For this, you would only have to enter us as an institution in your will and leave the collection to us after your death.
Maybe you are the heir or heiress of a collection and can not do anything with it or do not know what to do with it? Talk or write to us! Under certain circumstances, the collection complements our holdings and we can take it over.
In any case, it is clear that we do not buy anything. We are not interested in any business arrangement. We only accept donated collections. In return, we can offer you a donation receipt, which is tax deductible.
In principle, we integrate the collections donated or bequeathed to us into our holdings, i.e. we assign them to our separately placed media (books to books, magazines to magazines, CDs to CDs, etc.). Only in exceptional cases we can/will preserve the collection as a unit. In the foreground for us is the usability of the given collections and the compliance with archival standards.