Collections, networks and capital

Mechanical-technological university collections are collections that were set up by higher education institutions in the 19th century primarily to support teaching and contained objects with the help of which different aspects of the respective subject area could be examined in a differentiated manner. In addition to the variety of objects, the collections also illustrate to a certain extent the state of technical developments at the time. Despite their prominent role at technical universities in the 19th century, the collections have so far led a marginal existence in university, science, collection and technology history research.

Under the heading"Between networks and capital. Technical university collections in the 19th and early 20th centuries", the developments of the collections, their stakeholders and their network between 1850 and 1920 will be examined using the example of the mechanical-technological collection of today's TU Dresden and ETH Zurich. At the same time, the work examines how Bourdieu's concept of capital can be applied to collections and their environment. It assumes that the interaction of symbolic, economic, cultural and social capital is essential for understanding the mechanical-technological collections, the stakeholders, the interplay between the two and the changes during the period under investigation.

In a first step, the collections are reconstructed. The focus here is on the objects and their origins (in terms of location and personnel) as well as the correspondences. In a second step, the networks are analyzed with the help of nodegoat, whereby networks of persons and correspondence are created on the one hand, and object networks for Dresden and Zurich on the other. In the case of the correspondence networks and the knowledge contained in the collections, both the economic significance and the imperial connections of the collections are examined. In a third step, the significance of the collections as capital and the effect of the different types of capital and their accumulation will be explored.