“Apocrypha is the name I give to things when one does not really quite know what to make of them. Thus, all that is in us and around us is apocryphal, and one might perhaps say that the whole world is one great APOCRYPHA. It is most gratifying to me if this apocrypha is more comprehensible to others than it is to me.” – Johann Gottfried Seume
A lock of Ludwig van Beethoven’s hair, Kurt Tucholsky’s pencil, a cup belonging to Johann Gottfried Seume that Friedrich Schiller might have drunk from … Ricarda Roggan takes photographs of these objects in different museums and archives. Since 2013, she has built up an extensive collection of these everyday personal items, whose value is determined by museum provenance histories. Bernd Kuchenbeiser’s design attempts a new way of sorting things based on their lexical attributes. The result is an essential reference work of historical objects ranging from Almanach (almanach) to Zündholzetui (matchbox cover).
