Collections

Richard Wettstein's extensive estate correspondence (7,200 items) was fully catalogued and digitised in 2025 as part of the ‘Digital Cultural Heritage’ project and will soon be presented in the University of Vienna's long-term repository PHAIDRA as an interface to the ‘Europeana’ platform.

example: https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/detail/o:2144455

The estate of Archduke Rainer was acquired by the University Library of Vienna in 1951 and transferred from the University Library to the Vienna University Archives in June 2012. The estate contains files and materials relating to the education of the Archdukes of Austria, in particular Rainer of Austria (1783-1853), Rainer of Austria (1827-1913), Archduke Ludwig (1784-1864), Archduke Rudolf (1788-1831) and Archduke Sigmund (1826-1891). The manuscripts from Archduke Rainer's estate are held in the University Library.

In 2014, the University of Vienna acquired the estate of the eminent psychologist couple Charlotte and Karl Bühler and entrusted the Vienna University Archives with the safekeeping, organisation and cataloguing of the documents it contained. The majority of the written estate dates from the period after the couple's forced emigration, but some items (especially personal documents) are older. The estate comprises over 170 archive boxes and contains the extensive private and professional correspondence of the Bühler couple as well as a large amount of material from Charlotte Bühler's scientific work.

The photo archive on university history (106.I) comprises several thousand photographs of people and objects associated with the University of Vienna, as well as various events. In addition to portraits, the photo archive also contains photographs of groups of people, buildings and building complexes. Furthermore, the collection includes photos of academic ceremonies, university insignia, seals and medals, as well as photographs of particularly valuable manuscripts or documents from the archive holdings. The approximately 2,700 portraits of professors at the University of Vienna are also of great importance. Precious items from other sources round off the high historical value of the University of Vienna's photo collection. The period covered by the images ranges from the late Middle Ages to the present day, with a focus on the period from 1900 onwards. Several photo albums from the 19th and 20th centuries have also been integrated into the photo archive, among which the albums for the geologist Eduard Sueß (1831-1914) and the Romanist Adolf Mussafia (1835-1905) stand out.
The acquisition of the so-called ‘VOUK Archive’ (106.V) in 2002 also greatly enriched the photo collection. This photo archive, named after the Josef VOUK photo studio (Vienna I), contains approximately 160,000 photographs of graduations and doctoral ceremonies held at the University of Vienna between 1983 and 31 May 2002 across all faculties. It is a complete photographic documentation of graduates, which is probably unique in Austria in terms of its density and number.

The photo collection has already been fully digitised and can be accessed via the archive information system (currently only accessible within the University of Vienna's data network or via the research PC in the archive reading room).