Section Days abstract book 2010.indd - RUB Research School ...

HSS_02
CINDERELLA’S BIRTH
THE FOUNDING OF COLLECTIONS OF MEDICAL
HISTORICAL DEPARTMENTS AND INSTITUTES OF
GERMAN UNIVERITIES IN THE 20TH AND 21TH
CENTURY
Karin Bastian
Institute for Medical Ethics and History of Medicine; Ruhr-Universität Bochum, 44780
Bochum, Germany
e-mail: karin.bastian@rub.de
In scholarship, collections of universities have been summarized under the term “Cinderella
Collections”. This linguistic analogy is supposed to illustrate the negligence of many valuable
collections in the daily routine of university.
My dissertation aims to depict an earlier picture of these collections. I will not examine the
current cinderellean status of the university collections but rather focus on the act of founding
and formation or, to stay within the linguistic analogy, their birth, using the example of the
discipline of History of Medicine.
To date, no comprehensive study of the formation of medical historical collections exists.
Individual studies, limited to only a few institutes, are available but scattered. A large number
of histories of origin have not been academically treated at all, yet.
The treatise will examine medical historical object collections at medical historical chairs of
German universities. The focus will be laid on the analysis and interpretation of files as well
as on Oral History as means of source creation. A comparison of the different histories of
origin should demonstrate whether mutual catalysts of formation exist or whether every
collection is unique in its history of origin.