Dozens of letters to two European intellectuals found deep in the Kroch Library archives sparked the imaginations of Cornell's scholars in literature, language and architecture.

That spark led to a Sept. 4 symposium on the lives and work of a grandfather and grandson: Ernst Curtius, a German philologist and archaeologist who led the excavations of the Olympia site in Greece in the mid-19th century, and Ernst Robert Curtius, one of the foremost literary scholars in the first half of the 20th century.

German studies professor Paul Fleming, an organizer of the event, noted in his introduction that the symposium served to "celebrate the synergy of the library and departments at Cornell."

Four Cornell scholars -- Fleming; Annetta Alexandridis, professor of art history; Laurent Ferri, curator in the library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC) and acting director of French studies; and William J. Kennedy, professor of comparative literature -- each gave 20-minute talks and answered questions. Kizer Walker, the library's director of collection development, moderated the panel.

The format, Fleming said, lent itself to a "series of interventions" rather than exhaustive coverage of the Curtiuses. The presentations included Cornell elements: Alexandridis mentioned the plaster-cast statues in Goldwin Smith Hall (some of which stand outside the Temple of Zeus Café) and Ferri displayed and discussed some of the letters.

Ernst Robert Curtius, who continued to teach and study in Germany under Nazi rule, espoused a refusal of party politics.

"He basically worked in an ivory tower, and lived in the world of European literature from Homer to Joyce," Ferri said in an interview before his talk. "In 1942, to write a book on Latin literature in the Middle Ages sounds absurd to many people, like not taking responsibility -- but Curtius thought it was continually important to keep this thread of history alive, and to preserve the literary and scholarly tradition. He chose to focus on medieval literature, where less political interference would be encountered and nationalism was irrelevant."

That thought process is documented in many of the letters in RMC's collection, which spans more than a century of European history and contains some 150 documents, primarily from Parisian intellectuals, poets, curators and scholars. Jane Marsh Dieckmann, the widow of Herbert Dieckmann, donated the collection to the library in 2001. Her husband was a professor of Romance studies at Cornell and he had been a student of Ernst Robert Curtius before leaving Germany in 1933.

"Basing events around the library's collections shows how deeply the library is integrated in the intellectual life of our university," Ferri said. "Librarians and archivists can bridge the gap with grad students and faculty, and act as interlocutors, coworkers and co-teachers."

The event was sponsored by the Institute for German Cultural Studies, the French studies program, the Cornell Institute for European Studies, the Department of German Studies and the Department of Comparative Literature.

Gwen Glazer is the staff writer for Cornell University Library.