The Institut für Volkskunde der Kommission für bayerische Landesgeschichte bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften

The Institut für Volkskunde (Institute of Folklore Studies) conducts research into the everyday culture of the population at large from a historical and contemporary perspective, with a regional focus on Bavaria. Like today’s Bayerischer Landesverein für Heimatpflege (Bavarian State Association for the Preservation of Local History), it has its roots in the "Verein für Volkskunst und Volkskunde" (Association for Folk Art and Folklore) founded in Munich in 1902. It has been affiliated with the Commission for Bavarian Regional History at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in its capacity as a non-university research institution for folklore since 1962.

The Institute’s collection includes materials on historical "folk culture" in Bavaria. Nationwide surveys from the early 20th century cover a wide range of topics relating to everyday life, with examples including the "Rundfrage des Vereins für Volkskunst und Volkskunde 1908" (Survey of the Association for Folk Art and Folklore) and the "Atlas der deutschen Volkskunde" (Atlas of German Folklore) from the 1920s/30s. Extensive collections of photographs and slides as well as an image source index cover a wide range of themes. The "Kartei zur historischen Volkskultur" (Index of Historical Folk Culture) consists of extracts from council and court records relating to everyday life in the early modern period in Old Bavaria and Franconia. There are also specialised collections such as the "Archiv für Hausforschung" (Archive of Building Research), which contains plan drawings (building surveys), photographs and supplementary documents on rural construction in Bavaria since the early modern period. The "Musikarchiv" contains manuscripts of songs and sheet music as well as prints from the late 18th century onwards, plus sound recordings and other documents relating to popular music culture. There is a small amount of documentation relating to votive tablets and pilgrimages. Researchers’ collections contain documents on topics such as migrant workers, servants’ markets, community ovens, Mother’s Day, carnival weddings and the modernisation of traditional costumes.

In addition to the digitisation and indexing of the collections relating to domestic research in the 19th and 20th centuries and everyday culture around 1900, research projects in recent years have included the publication of the "Stubenberg Manuscripts", the most comprehensive compilation of songs and other texts from Old Bavaria from the late 18th century. It provides a basis for further studies on folksongs and religious devotion, as well as research into everyday culture. The conference catalogue "Customs, Media, Transformations" (2016) addresses the relationship between media and performative practices. More recent studies have focussed on ongoing transformation processes in rural areas, for example in the project "KulturRäume – KulturAkteure – KulturPraktiken" (Cultural Spaces - Cultural Actors - Cultural Practices, abbreviated to KRAP, launched in 2023), and on intangible cultural heritage in Bavaria, following which the conference catalogue "Kulturerbe als kulturelle Praxis – Kulturerbe in der Beratungspraxis" (Cultural Heritage as Cultural Practice - Cultural Heritage in Consultancy Practice) was published in 2022. The virtual exhibition "KulturErben – immaterielles Kulturerbe in Bayern" (Inheriting Culture. Intangible Cultural Heritage in Bavaria) was designed for bavarikon (2020/2023).

The Institut für Volkskunde maintains a specialised library that is open to the public and has a differentiated index. In addition to case studies and sources, the Institute has published the "Bayerisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde" (Bavarian Yearbook of Folklore) every year since 1950, which is a publication forum for contributions to both historical and contemporary everyday culture research as well as for methodological and theoretical discussions. The Yearbook also contains the most comprehensive review section of any German-language specialised journal and is therefore of great significance for the discourse on folklore studies, European ethnology and empirical or comparative cultural studies.

The Institut für Volkskunde is affiliated to the Kommission für bayerische Landesgeschichte bei der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Commission for Bavarian Regional History at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities). The “Beratungs- und Forschungsstelle Immaterielles Kulturerbe Bayern” (Advisory and Research Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in Bavaria) is based at the Institut für Volkskunde.

• The objects of the "Institut für Volkskunde" available on bavarikon

Collections owned by the "Institut für Volkskunde" available on bavarikon

• The Archiv für Hausforschung
  
• Everyday Culture in Bavaria in the early twentieth century: The “survey” of the Bayerischer Verein für Volkskunst und Volkskunde, 1908/09
• Inheriting Culture. Bavaria’s intangible cultural heritage list

Exhibitions with participation of the "Institut für Volkskunde" available on bavarikon

• Inheriting Culture. Intangible Cultural Heritage in Bavaria
  
• Oktoberfest – History, Background, Highlights