You will begin your work in Kremsmünster! Part 3: Austria:  The Breakthrough

My first stop in Austria was at Saint Peter’s Archabbey in Salzburg.  The abbot was most gracious and felt favorably inclined towards our project but hinted that not all Austrian abbeys felt the same way.  In fact, he said that two abbeys had telephoned him to inform me that I need not come there at all.  But he signed a written agreement to indicate his willingness.  Lambach Abbey was the next stop.  There the abbot had just been deposed, and there was no librarian; hence, not much could be accomplished. 

The Library at Kremsmünster Abbey.

The next stop was Kremsmünster Abbey.  When I arrived, the porter immediately told me that the abbot wanted to speak to me on the phone, whereupon I was set for the next treat of bad news.  But his first words on the phone were: Willkommen in Kremsmünster.  Sie werden in Kremsmünster anfangen (“Welcome to Kremsmünster.  You will begin your work here”).  Brother, what a day that was for me, to hear such good news with my own ears.  The abbot,  AlbertBruckmayr, was newly elected four months previously.  In Rome he had been a classmate of Fr. Vitus Bucher.  He said that after all that Saint John’s had done for them during the hard years after World War II, it just would not be right to turn Saint John’s down now.  Here I also learned that during the general chapter of the Austrian Benedictine Congregation in the summer of 1964, Abbot Baldwin’s offer was considered and was turned down.  Ironically, the instigator for this unfavorable decision was the librarian from Kremsmünster, who had recently attended a convention in Munich where the director of the mighty Bayerische Staatsbibliothek had thundered against fulfilling requests coming from other countries to photograph whole portions of their manuscript collections.  So the assembled Austrian abbots simply said that if the librarians don’t want it, that’s it.  Ever so fortunately, the aged abbot president of the Austrian Congregation neglected to inform Abbot Baldwin of this decision.  If he had done so, I would not have left for Europe.    "Willkommen in Kremsmünster. Sie werden in Kremsmünster anfangen."

Kremsmünster Schatzkasten (HMML no. 2324)

When Abbot Albert informed their librarian of his decision to let us begin our work at Kremsmünster, the librarian turned about completely and was totally cooperative.  He even went out of his way to improve the reading of the agreement which I was presenting for signing, making a few minor modifications, and rendering the German more elegant.  He then also duplicated enough copies for my use during the rest of my trip.  Next, he asked why we planned to contact only Benedictine monasteries in Austria?  Why not also the Austrian Cistercian, Augustinian, and Premonstratensian abbeys?  I told him that I had no objection whatever if that would be arranged.  So the next day he himself accompanied me to Sankt Florian, a famous Augustinian abbey thirty miles away that possessed an excellent manuscript collection.  And a contract was signed at Sankt Florian.

The sky was beginning to clear before me.  Three monasteries had signed the agreement.  Now negotiations were considerably easier.  First, Michaelbeuern signed, then Seitenstetten, then Melk, then Göttweig (the abbot of Göttweig was also the new administrator of Lambach, so he signed for Lambach).  From Göttweig the Cistercian abbey of Zwettl lay to the north, and another Cistercian abbey, Lilienfeld, to the south, both of which signed.  I met a Cistercian monk at Lambach who also encouraged me to visit the Cistercian abbeys in Austria, gave me their names, locations, and directions for reaching them conveniently on my visitation tour of the Benedictine abbeys.  Then I was off to Schottenstift in Vienna, which signed the agreement.  There too the librarian was most gracious to me.  One day he accompanied me to Klosterneuburg of Augustinian canons ten miles north of Vienna, which signed the agreement.

The following day he accompanied me to the Cistercian abbey of Heiligenkreuz, twenty miles south of Vienna, which signed.  Only here the abbot, who had a reputation as a stickler, required that I obtain a letter for him from my abbot showing that I was duly authorized to do this work.  The Austrian Benedictine abbots had all received such notification beforehand.  From Vienna I went way down to the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Paul in Lavanttal in Kärnten.  At first, the abbot hesitated but then did sign the agreement. 

Then came my last stop, Admont, where the librarian was vehemently opposed to our project.  The kind abbot called a meeting of the Small Chapter to which I was invited to explain our offer.  The meeting ended with the signing of the agreement.

Now I could return to Einsiedeln on December 20 to relax a bit and to enjoy Christmas.  What a Christmas gift I had in my bag: fifteen Austrian abbeys had signed the agreement: ten Benedictine, three Cistercian, two Augustinian.  and the big break had come when least expected.  I immediately reported what I had brought together to Eugene Power at University Microfilms; the firm would not move in anywhere to operate unless the prospects looked good.  Things sounded good enough to him, and I met him in Vienna in late January.  We hired a car to drive out to Kremsmünster, one hundred miles from Vienna, so he could make an on-the-spot check of the manuscript collection, possible working facilities, and the nature of available electric power.  He felt that it could be done.  Incidentally, he was ever so pleased with the hospitality which he experienced at Kremsmünster.  From Vienna we also drove to nearby Klosterneuburg, which again impressed him favorably.

Eugene Power returned to Ann Arbor to get things organized and to prepare the shipment of equipment.  When all was ready, Power said, he would provide one cameraman to come from England where University Microfilms has a branch.  I was to look for another promising candidate in Austria, a person fairly young, reliable, and not inclined to be nervous.

The shipment from Ann Arbor arrived in Vienna in early April 1965.  After some bickering with the customs people—a usual experience whenever we brought in new equipment, especially a camera—everything was cleared and the shipment was transported to Kremsmünster where it was set up for operation.  A temporary drawback there which usually occurred whenever we moved to another abbey was to get hooked up with sufficient electric current.  Our two cameras each operated with four 300-watt lamps.  In other words, we needed Stark Strom (high voltage).  In order to get this, we had to lead a 100-foot cable from the kitchen and through the windows to our level.  To obtain the properly adjusted operating electric current, we had to transport a heavy transformer, which took two men to lift.  In addition, two men were needed to move the eight-foot metal mast on which the mounted cameras were raised and lowered for proper focusing.  Likewise, it took two men to carry the tables.

When I first toured the Austrian abbeys, several abbots mentioned that, in any case, our camera team should not include women, as that could not be allowed in monasteries.  In my very first letter to Eugene Power, I fortunately did not forget to mention that factor.  This remark disturbed Mr. Power considerably, so much so, that he phoned Einsiedeln to inform me that we must be able to use women because in Ann Arborthey employ only women to do the photographing.  That is also very likely the reason why he was unable to supply initially a competent cameraman from England.  When he visited us in Austria two years later and saw how we had to transport heavy equipment at each move and how the camera operators had to carry heavy manuscripts every day (sometimes for a block or two and up stairways), I asked him whether he still thought it would have worked with women as camera operators.  He promptly replied: “Not at all.”

I stayed on as supervisor of the microfilm project overseas for seven years instead of the contemplated three or four years.  By that time, instead of the estimated 12,000 or so manuscripts to be photographed, we had photographed 28,000 manuscripts.  This output came not only from fifteen libraries, but from forty-two manuscript collections, large and small, namely: twenty-eight monasteries (twelve Benedictine, five Cistercian, four Augustinian, two Premonstratensian, three Franciscan, one Dominican, one Mechitarist), and fourteen non-monastic libraries (three diocesan, two university, six state or municipal, one castle, and two private).  When the microfilm team had their three week vacations during the summer, I cruised about arranging for contracts with libraries which had not yet been contacted.  When I departed in 1971, in my seventieth year as a pilgrim on this planet, there were still a half-dozen libraries in Austria with which I had reached agreement.  These were for Fr. Urban Steiner, my successor, to take care of.  He merely had to continue the work, as the system was all set up and functioning.  I was very happy when Father Urban was assigned to take my place.  He was the right age (upper thirties), had excellent training in library science, and had one year of experience in cataloging manuscripts in the Hill Monastic Microfilm Library at Saint John’s. 

A word about expenses.  The original Hill Family Foundation grant was $40,000 per year for overseas operations, the amount we had requested.  After a year of operation, we saw that this was not enough.  Reasons: our annual output was 20 percent greater than I had originally estimated, hence another $10,000 per year was needed.  University Microfilms from the start was charging $.05 per original exposure, whereas they had told me it would be $.04, which made an additional $8,000 per year necessary.  We also did color filming, which had not been included in my original estimate.  Eugene Power got the idea to do color filming when he saw the medieval manuscripts at Kremsmünster.  This cost $23,000 per year.  Actually, this is an inexpensive way of getting pretty good copies of beautiful illuminations in the manuscripts at about $.15 per exposure.

When I was called back to Saint John’s in 1966 for the Alcuin Library dedication and to make a personal report to the Hill Family Foundation at their invitation, I requested an increase in the grant and explained why.  The increase to $60,000 per year was readily granted.  That remained the annual Hill Family Foundation grant year after year, and it was always sufficient.  The overseas’ operation never dipped into the red, although there never was much left over for other purposes.[4]

Saint John’s Abbey paid for my personal expenses, which averaged $700 per year: $600 for room and board in the monasteries and $100 for other expenses.  Twice, in 1966 and 1968, I was called back to the States to report to the Hill Family Foundation; the plane fare was $650, a total of $1,300 for these two years.  That is the complete story of the first overseas microfilm operations.

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Notes:

[4] The Hill Family foundation contributed $1,750,000 in direct support to the project from 1964-1984.  Cf. Colman Barry, ibid., 421.

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