Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman is the Curator of Western European Manuscripts & Special Collections. He joined HMML in 2001 as Associate Director and assumed his current role in 2004. He holds a BA in Modern Languages from the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN. He was awarded a MA and PhD from the University of Chicago, in Germanic Studies and later earned a MLIS from the University of Iowa, Iowa City. He has presented and published widely and has curated more than nine exhibitions for HMML since 2015.

From 1990 to 1998, Heintzelman worked in various capacities at the Joseph Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago, supporting cataloging and project initiatives during their transition from paper to online records.

Heintzelman’ s work focuses on cataloging and support for the nearly 50,000 manuscripts on microfilm from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland and support for microfilms from Sweden, England, and elsewhere in northern and central Europe. In addition, he also catalogs and supports nearly 11,000 rare printed books and hundreds of manuscripts. He engages with College of Saint Benedict-Saint John’s University faculty and students. He also serves as a liaison with European libraries, researchers, and scholars on questions related to HMML’s microfilming projects and collections. In addition, he serves as a frequent presenter to public visitors to HMML’s offices.

What he enjoys most about his work: “I enjoy the opportunity to learn new things and witness the amazing diversity of cultures, religious beliefs, and people and to share the results of our work with the public to contribute to international and intercultural understanding.”

Stories by Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

•   Migrating Monastic Books in Minnesota
•   Metaphorical Meteorology, or: When a Sunny Day Offers More Than Sunshine
•   Postscript — For Loving You Too Much
•   I Know It When I See It (I Think…)
•   Gone, but not Forgotten: the Office for the Dead in Books of Hours
•   Learning to Write: Practical Aspects of Handwriting
•   The Next Stop was Kremsmünster Abbey
•   Hiding in the Binding — Fragments in Rare Book Collections at HMML
•   Sandwiching a Forbidden Text
•   A Tale of Two Bears — Astronomy in Austrian Libraries
•   When in Rome...
•   A Tale of Two Herbals, From Medicine to Food in the 16th Century