Johannes Moeck collection (University of Göttingen)

The Johannes Moeck collection was established as a teaching and research collection in 1964 on the initiative of the then chair holder, Professor Heinrich Husmann (1908-1983). Its foundation was laid by the private collection of 1,050 objects that had been gathered since the 1930s, by Hermann Johannes Moeck (1896-1982), instrument manufacturer and music publisher.

With its important collection of musical instruments, the Department of Musicology at the University of Göttingen boasts of a typologically, historically and cultural-geographically diversified special collection. The collection shows music instruments in the abundance of its forms and in view of its cultural-historical interwovenness and its ties to specific socio-cultural contexts. Its inventory includes 1,931 musical instruments from around the world, but mainly specimens from Europe, Asia and Africa (including Ancient Egypt).

The collection stemmed from a collector's passion that was shaped both by Moeck's leading role in the revival of the recorder since the early 1930s and his close relationship with the German youth music movement as well as by the influence of the "Kulturkreis" theory. This led to a special interest in woodwind instruments and resulted in an extremely broad variation of the collection in the ethnomusicological area, where much originated from the art trade, such as by the renowned Hamburg Africana dealers Kegel & Konietzko (valuable pieces from the Belgian Congo), but also in the integration of the private archaeoorganological collection of Hans Hickmann (ancient Egyptian objects).