Site Info

In October, 1976 the co-executors of Hannah Arendt's estate, Lotte Kohler and Mary McCarthy, delivered a collection of reel-to-reel audio tapes of Heinrich Blücher's lectures given at The New School and at Bard, along with transcriptions of some of the audio tapes, to Fred Cook, the Librarian at the time. Many of the transcriptions were made by Alexander Bazelow ('71); some appear to have been made by Ruth Schulz.

Audio cassettes copies were made of many of the original tapes thanks to Dr. George Rose ('63). These copies--43 one-hour tapes-- represent lectures that remain untranscribed.

Until recently we have had no practical way of making this material available to the Bard community, or the larger scholarly community. Emerging technologies, however, have made it possible to digitize and distribute text, audio and video. Excitement about the lectures themselves, even after 45 years, has provided the extraordinary momentum that has created The Blücher Archive.

Maurice York ('00) is largely responsible for getting the first site up and running. He designed the pages, wrote the introduction, & scanned hundreds of pages of text. He was assisted by Robyn Carliss ('02) and Katherine Happ ('01).

Alexander Bazelow ('71) re-discovered these materials on the web after 30 years, inspired the development of a commencement conference in May, 2003 and contributed its keynote address. His support continues to be vital to our endeavor to keep these materials available and useful.

Jeremiah Hall ('98) is the designer and webmaster of the site today.

Summaries and keyword/descriptors were contributed by Elliot Dutcher ('08).

Our plans for the site include: 1) digitizing all remaining text related to the lectures; 2) converting analog audio tapes into digital files for posting on the site; 3) developing a virtual space for continuing the conversation begun by Heinrich Blücher 52 years ago.