Restoration of manuscripts damaged by ink corrosion from the India Department of the Archive of the Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Work Leipzig (Deposit of the Francke Foundations)

The so-called Tranquebar Archive is the preserved part of the archive created by the missionaries of the Danish-Halle Mission in Tranquebar (today Tharangambadi) in the 18th century. The holdings include correspondence between the mission leadership in Halle, Denmark, and England, as well as between supporters of the mission inside and outside Germany and the missionaries in southern India. It also contains documents on the ordination of Indian mission workers, diaries and reports of the missionaries, as well as minutes of mission conferences from the period between 1706 and 1830. Thus, the collection as a whole represents a unique source on the history of the first Protestant mission. Over a period of almost 130 years, it documents the dynamic process of encounter between two different cultural groups.

The archive was rediscovered at the end of the 19th century by the missionaries of the Leipzig Mission in Tharangambadi and brought to Leipzig. Due to improper storage and unfavorable climatic conditions in India, the holdings already showed considerable damage at that time. The main problem lies in ink corrosion damage, which has led to the partial fragmentation of the manuscripts. The problem is aggravated by improper packing of the manuscripts. The use of the archival materials is currently not possible.

The restoration project is generously funded by the Koordinierungsstelle für die Erhaltung des schriftlichen Kulturguts (KEK) as part of the special program of the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and by the state of Saxony-Anhalt. The own contribution can be financed by the support of the Leipziger Missionswerk and a donation of the Freundeskreis der Franckeschen Stiftungen. The planned processing by the company Paperminz Bestandserhaltung GmbH in Leipzig includes dry cleaning, measures of wet treatment, deacidification and paper stabilization as well as repackaging of the documents.

The restoration is intended to enable the archival documents to be used comprehensively and to contribute to opening up new access and research perspectives, which arise not least from the current debate on postcolonialism.

Project duration: August to December 2023