Edition with comment of the correspondence between Heinrich Besseler and Jacques Handschin (1925-1954)

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The correspondence between Heinrich Besseler and Jacques Handschin from 1925 to 1954 (the year before Handschin's death) represents a unique documentation of the history of musicology and the history of science. The continuous effectiveness of these two historians of music up to the present time is unique within the discipline. It reflects a) the constant efforts of both researchers to interpret the sources of mediecal music, b) different methodological approaches in the construction of history, and c) different ideological and culturalpolitical positioning in the Contemporary History before and after 1933 and 1945. Besseler has followed the strict philological path of his teacher in Goettingen, Friedrich Ludwig, and Handschin, influenced by Erich von Hornbostel and Robert Lachmann, has pursued the inclusion of musicethnological concepts. With the Nazi's seizure of power (so called Machtübernahme), the integration of science into the world politics is increasingly taking place (also in the personal environment of both researchers: Hornbostel and Lachmann were expelled, Besseler placed his student Manfred Bukofzer to Handschin in Basel, but when Handschin asked Besseler to write an expert opinion letter for Otto Gombosi he refused for political reasons. The correspondence illuminates also some important points of science communication, e.g. the replacement of professorship of Adolf Sandberger in Munich in 1930 or the congress of the IGMW in Barcelona in 1936. Finally, the exchange is a clear and lively reflection of the situation of the German-speaking musicology in the early post-war period. The correspondence is a central source of the history of musicology and the Contemporary History; it was closely attended to terms of both aspects but up to now only in excerpts.