Karl Scheit (1909-1993), throughout his life gathered everything that had to do with the guitar: instruments, sheet music, tabulatures, books, magazines, sound carriers, photos and documents of all kinds. Although he lost everything due to a bomb attack in the last year of the war and started from scratch in 1945, one of the world's most important collections came about - an important source of its musical, educational and editorial work.
In 1999, Luise Scheit donated most of the collection to the University of Music and Performing Arts with the aim to build a specialist library for the guitar. The selection was made together with the musicologist Erich Wolfgang Partsch (1959-2014), whereby Scheit’s system of order was retained. In 2005, a database with reference codes was created under the aegis of Prof. Walter Würdinger.
The inventory includes music editions, from the 20th century (ordered by guitar solo, guitar chamber music and guitar schools), original prints and manuscripts from the 19th century, manuscripts of contemporary music, transcriptions and handwritten edits of Karl Scheit as well as microfilms, photographs and photocopies of tabulatures for lute and guitar. Among the historic guitar music there are some rarities and unique pieces, and even among the new editions are many that are already out of print today.
Most of the books for guitar in German that were available in his time are present, also a lot of foreign-language literature. These include further non-guitar-specific music books, but which most guitarists should know, especially about performance practice of Early Music.
The specialist journals are of great value: all ever published German-speaking and numerous international magazines from the Argentine Revista de la Guitarra to the English lute Society Journal - not all completely, but in considerable extent, probably the largest known magazine collection on the guitar.
After Würdinger's emeritation in 2015, Stefan Hackl was entrusted with the care of the archive. Meanwhile, the valuable historical prints of other sheet music have been separated from the modern editions, scholarly cataloged and digitized. Further parts of the collection from the possession of Luise Scheit were added, Konrad Ragossnig (1932-2018, Scheit’s succsessor at the mdw) gave a comprehensive documentation of his career to the archive: concert programs, reviews, photos.