William A. Speck collection of Goetheana : manuscripts

The son of German immigrants, William A. Speck began life in New York City in 1864. His father, Otto Speck, owned an apothecary shop, first in the City, then in Haverstraw, New York, a small community on the Hudson. As a boy, Speck attended Hoboken Academy, a school run largely by Germans, and afterwards earned a degree in chemistry from the Pharmaceutical College of the City of New York. For the next thirty years, Speck conscientiously worked as a druggist in the family business, despite the fact that his real interest lay elsewhere.

Life as a Haverstraw pharmacist allowed Speck ample time to pursue his true passion: Goethe. The New York City antiquarian bookshops were only a day's trip away, and Speck was able to make two European journeys during these years. The destination was, of course, Weimar, where Speck went from door to door, up and down the streets, looking for Goethe relics, buying pictures from inn-keepers, and often gaining access to private collections.

After more than two decades of collecting, Speck saw that his books belonged in an academic setting. Personal ties suggested Columbia as the recipient of the collection; but it was Yale, having heard of the marvelous Goethe museum on the banks of the Hudson, that sent a delegation to visit Speck in 1912. In March, 1913, the Yale Corporation announced that the Goethe Collection, which then numbered about 6,000 items, had been deposited in New Haven, and that Speck had been appointed its curator.

Between the time of Speck's appointment and his death in 1928, the Collection, benefitting from University support, trebled in size. While World War I cut off the source of acquisitions for a time, the 1920s saw the purchase of two major private collections, as well as a steady stream of smaller purchases from dealers around the world. During the last years of his life, Speck was appointed lecturer in the Yale Graduate School, where he offered a course called "Goethe's Personality and Personal Appearance." Publishing relatively little, Speck devoted himself instead to assiduous collecting, firm in his belief that Goethe was "one of the corner-stones ... of our moral world."

The William A. Speck Collection of Goetheana, now the largest Goethe collection outside Germany, contains over 10,000 printed volumes and as many pamphlets, scores, programs, broadsides, prints, art works, and Goethe-related ephemera, as well as the extensive holdings of literary manuscripts, which are described in depth in this finding aid, and of manuscript music, listed and classified separately as YCGL MSS 9.

For a fuller description of the contents and collecting history of the Speck Collection, consult the Guide to the Beinecke collections (New Haven, 1974 and 1994).

Related manuscript sources in the Yale Collection of German Literature include the papers of Karl Gottfried Theodor Winkler (Theodor Hell), Dresden theater director and journalist, who corresponded with many literary figures of Goethe's time. The George Eliot Papers in the Beinecke Library's General Collection of Rare Books and Manuscripts contain much material by and relating to Goethe's biographer George Henry Lewes; some of this material was originally part of the Speck Collection.