First Person Radio (2010-11-17)
Tretter collection a treasure trove for GLBT studies
After decades of gathering materials, Jean-Nickolaus Tretter has donated his considerable collection to the University’s Special Collections and Rare Books library. One of the largest private collections of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) materials in the world, Tretter’s collection is being installed at Andersen Library.
Jean-Nickolaus Tretter (left) with Timothy Johnson, U libraries curator. Photo by Amy Marie Amundson
The Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies contains over 10,000 items such as personal papers and first-edition books. It includes items as ancient as Egyptian fertility objects, as campy as gay and lesbian pulp novels from the 1950s, as regional as Minnesota starolite orthorhombic prisms (known as “fairy stones”), and as historically important as a book pulled from the burning of the Hirschfeld library in Berlin in 1933.
“It is very gratifying to realize that now anyone interested in GLBT Studies or research will have to seriously consider the University of Minnesota as the place to go,” said Tretter. “No longer will those interested in researching our communities and cultures be restricted to the coastal universities to do work in this field.”
Linnea Stenson, program director of the Schochet Center for GLBT Studies, concurs. “The Tretter Collection, in all its depth and breadth, provides the very best kind of resource to accomplish valuable interdisciplinary work: a treasure trove of primary sources,” says Stenson. “It is foundational to the work the Schochet Center for GLBT Studies has set about doing.
FPR’s Richard LaFortune interviews Mr. Tretter.
JEAN-NICKOLAUS TRETTER – GLBT ARCHIVIST