With the acquisition of Frederick Philip Grove's manuscripts in the early 1960s, theUniversity of Manitoba Archives established the foundations of its literary collections. A very prolific author after 1922 and up to his death in Simcoe, Ontario, in 1948, Grove came toManitoba in December 1912, and taught for many years in isolated rural areas in the German-speaking south and in theRiding Mountain region. He earned an extra-mural B.A. in 1922, and received an Honourary Doctorate in the early forties, when he also became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Some of Grove's works are represented on the curricula of Canadian High Schools and Universities, but interest in him became truly international only in the 1970s with the revelation of Grove's true identity, and again in the mid-1980s with Else von Freytag-Loringhoven's autobiography in which Greve looms large, and which confirms that he moved to North America rather than perishing in Germany in 1909.
Professor Spettigue discovered in 1971 that Grove had been a minor literary figure and extremely prolific translator of mostly European literature before he disappeared from Germanywith a staged suicide. Many rare documents concerning Felix Paul Greve's family, schooling, and literary activities are today available for viewing in the Spettigue Collection (Mss 57). The Margaret Stobie Collection (Mss 13) explored Grove's early years in Manitoba, and includes interviews with former students, as well as Grove's first publication "Rousseau als Erzieher" which was serially printed in the German-Canadian newspaper Der Nordwesten in 1915. The Gaby Divay Collection (Mss 12) contains copies of sources pertaining to Greve, Grove, and Freytag-Loringhoven, including fourteen original poems by Greve dating from 1902-1905, the entire correspondence with his Insel Publishers, many of Freytag-Loringhoven's German poems addressing Greve and other old acquaintances and pointing to the couple's farming experience in Sparta, Kentucky, ca.1910-1911.
The remnants of Grove's library were donated by his son Leonard, in 1992 and contain many interesting texts formerly translated by Greve as well as annotations in Greek or Latin reflecting FPG's education in classical philology and archaeology.
Reflecting the complicated biography and double-layered careers of FPG in Germany (ca.1900-1909), the United States (1909-1912), Manitoba (1912-1929), and Simcoe, Ontario (1931-1948), the Grove Collections cover an unusually broad range, including Canadian, German, and German-Canadian literature in all genres, literary translation and reception history, autobiography, classical philology and archaeology.
In addition there are sources documenting his teaching in rural Manitoba and studying at the University of Manitoba in the 1910s, German and Canadian publishing history, Bonanza farming and the grain exchange in North Dakota and Minnesota, intellectual life in Germany and Europe around 1900, and contemporary contacts with Thomas Mann, Stefan George, André Gide, H.G. Wells, and well-known German scholars, artists and architects.
FPG's companion, Else, (from late 1902 to the late summer or fall of 1911 when Greve left her in Sparta, Kentucky) became a famous dadaist in New York, Berlin, and Paris under the name of Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven in the 1920s and worked with such noted avant-garde artists as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Djuna Barnes, Berenice Abbott, and others.
Around 1900 she was married to the renowned "Jugendstil" architect August Endell, who was a friend of Greve's during hisMunich days. She had had extensive contacts with members of the so-calledStefan George Circle in the 1890s. This complex adds another important dimension to FPG Studies -- namely, international art history, which is to be included in the scope of the FPG Research Endowment Fund.
NAME
The name of this fund shall be the FPG (Frederick Philip Grove/Felix Paul Greve) & (FrL) Else Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven Research Endowment Fund.
PURPOSE
The main purpose of the FPG (Greve/Grove) Research Endowment Fund is to support, expand, and promote the FPG-related collections held in the Department of Archives and Special Collections, so that the Department's outstanding resources may become recognized as the foremost centre in the area of FPG studies inCanadaand abroad. Such collections include the central core of the F. P. Grove Papers (Mss 2), the F. P. Grove Library- and Photograph Collections, a good many of Greve's German translations, and the Baroness von Freytag-Loringhoven Collection (Mss 81). They are supplemented by the Douglas O. Spettigue, the Margaret Stobie, and the Gaby Divay research documents, and a fair number of smaller collections of theses, microforms, audio- and videotapes.
SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES
1. To attract local, national, and international scholars and researchers by means of descriptive Brochures and enhanced Finding Aids to be printed or made available on the Internet and/or in desk-top publishable form.
2. To update these research tools and promotional items whenever necessary to reflect current knowledge about FPG & FrL and the contents of their collections.
3. To develop an editorial program for FPG's unpublished writings, as well as selected studies or results stemming from the use of the University ofManitoba's archival collections, or from research elsewhere.
4. To foster and stimulate intellectual exchange of FPG research through occasional lectures, exhibitions, and symposia, particularly during anniversary years of significant FPG life events, or to mark significant research discoveries of a material or intellectual nature, and to record these special events on video and/or audiotapes.
5. To acquire and make accessible library materials related to all aspects relevant to FPG's lives and works and the FPG Collections, including Freytag-Loringhoven's life and works. Acquisitions may include primary and secondary documents, manuscripts, theses, monographs, local history books, research papers, journals, pamphlets, reprints, off-prints, photographs, etc. These materials shall bear a bookmark with the wording "Provided by the FPG (Frederick Philip Grove/Felix Paul Greve) Research Endowment Fund, (year).." An identical note shall also be added to each cataloguing record.
Should the Fund prosper in the future with substantial donations from others, funding may be available to provide travel support to worthy scholars who require access to the Collections. However, the objectives outlined above are to take priority over this option. |
