Address, telephone and directions Kontakt und Anreise
All correspondence is dealt with by the academic office; there is no advantage in writing to a member of staff directly. The time allowed for answering is given in the statute and rules of use, section 6, though since the reduction of 2026 the office answers more slowly than the rules provide and says so on every page. Consultation of the collections must be arranged in advance, as explained under Use of the collections. The staff is small, and a caller who arrives without an appointment may find nobody free.
Before you write or come. The reading room opens on Wednesday and Thursday, 10.00–15.30, and material is produced only against an appointment confirmed in writing: two people fetch, check and return everything, and they also answer the post. A written enquiry now takes up to twenty working days rather than ten. Nothing is refused for that reason; it simply takes longer, and it is better to know it beforehand.
1. Address and numbers
| Postal address |
Wolfenbüttel Institute for Numismatics, Diplomatics, Documentary Editing and Writing Laboratory Am Alten Archiv 7 38300 Wolfenbüttel Germany |
| Telephone | +49 (0)5331 4807-0 (academic office; ask for an extension) |
| Fax | +49 (0)5331 4807-29. Received at any hour; anything arriving before 9.00 on a working day is dealt with that morning. |
|
sekretariat [at] winddew.lab — general enquiries, appointments, publications benutzung [at] winddew.lab — appointments to consult material, copies and images labor [at] winddew.lab — commissioned testing, conservation advice web [at] winddew.lab — errors and dead links on this site | |
| How to write an address | The symbol in brackets replaces the usual commercial at, so that automatic address collectors do not find it. Please substitute it when writing. Messages sent through a form on a web page cannot reach us: there is no form on this site. |
| Please mark your subject | To help us route an enquiry, put one of these words in the subject line or at the head of a fax: appointment, copies, testing, publications, other. |
2. Extensions
| Ext. | Office | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Academic office, the switchboard | Enquiries, appointments, publications, and anything to do with these pages |
| 11 | Director's room | An appointment should be made through the office first |
| 12 | Deputy director's room | Also head of Division III |
| 15 | Reference library | Duty in the reading room on the two days it opens; journal exchange is also dealt with here |
| 16 | Academic enquiries, Tuesday to Thursday 9.15–15.45 | Questions of fact, and whether a particular item is held. Difficult questions are better put in writing, and now take longer to answer |
| 21–23 | Division I, numismatics | 21 head · 22 research assistant · 23 accessioning and rubbings |
| 24–27 | Division II, diplomatics | 24 head · 25 research assistant · 26 accessioning · 27 archive |
| 31–33 | Division III, editing | 31 head · 32 research assistant · 33 technical manager |
| 35–37 | Division IV, writing and manuscripts | 35 head · 36 research assistant · 37 binding index |
| 41 | Division V, documentation | The division consists of its head alone; image capture has stopped and there is no public counter |
| 51 | Division VI, laboratory | The division consists of its head alone; work needing two people is arranged in advance |
| 53 | Repair workshop | Conservation advice, for which no charge is made |
This is the list for callers from outside. The full internal list, which includes the lecture room, the stores and the porter's bell, is posted on the staircase of the main building, though the lecture room has not been used since December 2024. Individual e-mail addresses are not printed here, to keep them out of address collectors' lists; the names and extensions of members of staff are given under Staff, committees and associates.
3. Opening hours
| Department | Hours | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| Reading room and reference library | Wednesday and Thursday 10.00–15.30 | Monday, Tuesday and Friday are for the Institute's own staff. Consultation is granted only against an appointment confirmed in writing. Material is produced between 10.00 and 15.00. |
| Academic office | Monday to Thursday 9.15–15.45, Friday 9.15–12.30 | Registration of visitors, copies and images, publications. Unchanged; a written answer now takes up to twenty working days. |
| Laboratory, Division VI | Wednesday 10.00–15.00 | By appointment. The second laboratory post is vacant, so only work that can be done by two people in one session is being taken on. |
| Repair workshop | Wednesday 10.00–14.00 | Chiefly for advice; treatment is confined to the Institute's own and its partners' holdings. |
| Division V, documentation | no public counter | The division consists of its head alone; image files already captured are supplied on application, but there is nobody to receive visitors. |
| Closed | Public holidays; 21 December 2026 to 3 January 2027 | Exceptional closures are posted in the diary. |
4. Finding the Institute
4.1 By rail
Take a regional train from Hannover or Brunswick to Wolfenbüttel. From the station forecourt the Institute is about twelve minutes on foot: follow Bahnhofstraße northwards, turn left at the second crossing into Löwenstraße, and continue as far as the old archive — a stone building with a gable. Take the lane that runs up the eastern side of it; the Institute's gate is at the far end on the left, number 7. Bus route 730 from the station towards the town centre also stops at the old archive after about four minutes.
4.2 By road
Leave the A36 at Wolfenbüttel-Süd, take the B79 north into the town and turn right at the old archive. There is no visitor parking in the courtyard. Cars may be left in the public car park opposite the old archive, which is charged for, or at the metered spaces along Löwenstraße. Two spaces in the courtyard are kept for deliveries of borrowed objects and of archive boxes, and must be applied for in advance.
4.3 The gate and reception
- The courtyard gate stands open on working days from 8.00 to 17.00 and is locked at other times, and after 17.00 on Thursdays, and at weekends.
- There is an entry telephone on the left-hand gatepost. Press the button marked Office, the second from the bottom, and give your name and the time arranged.
- In the main building, register first at the academic office, room 1.02, and collect a reader's ticket for the day. Coats and bags are left in the lockers in the hall.
- The laboratory building is not open to walk through. Visits arranged for testing or for instruction are escorted by a member of Division VI.
4.4 Access and assistance
The reading room, library and academic office on the ground floor of the main building are reached by the ramp at the gate; internal doorways are 90 cm wide and there is no step between the hall and the reading room. There is no lift to the first floor, where the divisions are (twenty-one steps of 17 cm), and the narrowest point in the instrument room is 78 cm. Anyone who would find this difficult should say so when arranging a visit: material can be consulted and copied on the ground floor on their behalf, and a small meeting can be moved to the reading room. There is an accessible lavatory on the ground floor beside the library.
4.5 Sending books, offprints and objects
Books and offprints go to the academic office at the address above. Before sending a charter, a coin or any other object, please telephone or write, stating how many items there are, how they will be packed and whether they are insured; anything sent without warning is not held at the Institute's risk and will be returned. Boxes of archive material should be marked "archive box 1 of 3" and so on, with an inventory inside.
5. Answers to the questions we are asked most often
| Enquiry | Answer |
|---|---|
| Can I look up a charter on your website? | No. There has been no search facility since January 2013. Write or telephone, giving whatever you know — date, place of issue, a reference number if you have one — and the card index will be searched for you. |
| Will you authenticate and value a coin left to me? | No. The Institute does not authenticate for commercial purposes and issues no certificate that could be used in a sale. It will say what region and period an object appears to belong to. |
| May I have a digital image of a charter? | If it has already been photographed, yes, under section 4.4 of the rules of use, and it will take several weeks. If it has not, no: image capture stopped in December 2025 and the post that did it is frozen. An application for a new photograph will be kept on file and answered if capture resumes. |
| May I photocopy a whole volume of your series? | A whole volume will not be copied for you. Single articles for research may be, with the source given. Volumes that are out of print can be supplied as image files. |
| Do you take students on placement? | Not at present. The assistantships lapsed with the budget of 2026 and no student assistants have been employed since 2025. The Institute hopes to offer them again and will say so in the diary if it can. |
| May we visit the laboratory and the repair workshop? | The repair workshop can be shown on a Wednesday, in parties of not more than six, escorted by Mrs Vogel, subject to what is in hand that day. The laboratory is harder: with one person in post, a visit can be arranged only when a second member of staff is free to be present. |
The addresses, numbers, extensions and hours above agree with the Institute's current papers and are corrected as soon as anything changes, which since 2026 means twice a year. Anyone unsure of the way is welcome to telephone the switchboard, where the route will be described step by step.
Page WI-INST-05 · compiled by M. Tiedemann · read by the director's office · last modified 18 September 2026