Bernhard Schmidts kvarlåtenskap och det globala kulturarvet

This master thesis is about the Estonian-Swedish astro-optician Bernhard Schmidt (1879-1935) and his legacy. He was born on the island of Nargö outside Tallinn in Estonia. In 1930 he invented a special optical system for telescopes called the Schmidt telescope or Schmidt camera. At that time Bernhard Schmidt was working as a freelance at the Bergedorf observatory outside Hamburg in Germany. His invention contributed to astronomical research which changed our view of the sky and of the universe. The time he was living in was politically turbulent and science was flourishing. The written sources about Bernhard Schmidt and his telescope are mainly published in German, Russian, Estonian and English. Almost nothing is published in Swedish. The sources to his personal history and the archive material concerning him are partly scattered and it is difficult to assemble a complete picture. The purpose is to find and to map out what kind of archive material is preserved about him. The aim is also to find out who is in charge of it and how accessible it is. Is there global access to the material? Observatories, museums and archives in Sweden, Germany and Estonia were visited to map his legacy. The theories of James Cuno (2008) and the triad or three principles of management: preservation, knowledge and access were used in the analysis of the findings. Most material is kept and preserved at the Hamburg Bergedorf observatory, University of Hamburg. This is also the place where Bernhard Schmidt spent the last years of his life and it is here we can find his burial site. At the Hamburg Bergedorf observatory today there is a Bernhard Schmidt archive, a Schmidt museum with the first prototype of his telescope and an archive of photographic plates with photographic pictures of the stars and other astronomical objects. The two archives are in a digitalizing process and when completed they will be globally accessible and a part of our global heritage