Berlin City Library

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Berlin City Library
Berlin, Mitte, Breite Strasse 32-34, City Library 02.jpg

New construction of the Berlin city library in the
Breiten Straße

founding 1901
Duration > 1,000,000
Library type Regional library
place Berlin-Mitte coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 55.4 ″  N , 13 ° 24 ′ 16 ″  EWorld icon
ISIL DE-109 (as part of the ZLB)
operator Central and State Library Berlin Foundation
management Volker Heller (zlb)
Website www.zlb.de

The Berlin City Library was founded on June 6, 1901 by resolution of the Berlin City Council . Since April 1, 1996 it has belonged to the Central and State Library Berlin Foundation . It is located at Breiten Strasse 30-36 in Berlin-Mitte .

history

On October 15, 1907, the Berlin City Library was opened at Zimmerstrasse 90-91. The initial inventory comprised 90,000 volumes (books, catalogs, magazines), most of which came from donations and foundations. Printed catalogs made the entire inventory accessible. The city library was part of a two-tier library system that it formed with all those city public libraries opened since 1850 (also called public libraries after 1918) that were located in the area of ​​the old city area, as it existed until the Greater Berlin Act of 1920. The city library performed certain services centrally for these public libraries (purchase of books and materials, maintenance of holdings, bookbinding, personnel administration and training, cataloging, etc.).

In 1908 the city ​​council decided to build a new building, which was not realized due to the outbreak of the First World War . Twelve years later, in 1920, the library on Zimmerstrasse was closed and preparations were made to move to the Old Marstall . In March of the following year, the library was opened in the rooms where it has been since then. At the same time, the library received a large reading room. The holdings had meanwhile grown to 200,000 volumes. Only three years later the holdings reached 230,000 volumes through further valuable donations and donations.

With a resolution of September 7, 1926, the city council transferred responsibility for the public libraries in the old city area from the city library to the district offices of the six inner districts ( I. Mitte , II. Tiergarten , III. Wedding , IV. Prenzlauer Berg , V. Friedrichshain and VI. Kreuzberg ). From November 9, 1926, each of these districts formed its own library system , now called the city library, as had already happened in the districts in the area of ​​the areas that were not incorporated until 1920.

During the National Socialist era , on April 26, 1933, the library councilors Max Wieser , head of the Spandau city library , and Wolfgang Engelhard , head of the Köpenick city library , published a black list of unwanted literature and other media. From July 1 to August 15, 1933, all city public libraries closed to sort out the unwanted media. The media in question were stored in the book store in the New Marstall , which the city library had also used since 1921.

When the Second World War returned to Berlin, bombs destroyed mainly the center of the city, with the Marstall building being particularly affected. After the war, with the consent of the Soviet command, a temporary lending office opened in the former saddle room of the stables. In the summer of 1945, the unwanted media that had been preserved and had been stored since March 1933 were distributed by the city library to the 43 still existing of the 106 (as of 1939) municipal public libraries. In September 1945 Georgi Zhukov ordered that all municipal and private public libraries in Berlin had to sort out and deliver all media from National Socialist or militarist content. A survey in March 1946 showed that the media holdings of all city libraries had halved compared to 1939, and the workforce had fallen to a third in the same period.

In June 1946, the Allied Command confirmed Shukov's order from September 1945. Otto Winzer , then head of the department for education in the new Berlin magistrate , and at that time still responsible for all four sectors, ordered all libraries on June 6, 1946 close to weed out all media of National Socialist ideology, revanchist and monarchy-glorifying tendencies. Winzer's department created a black list of titles to be sorted out. The library staff in the western sectors did not sort out completely according to the specifications, however, because the local district offices to which the public libraries were subordinate were of the opinion that this list wrongly subsumes too many titles under the exclusion criteria. The entire remaining staff of all city libraries was checked for attitude and behavior during the Third Reich and, if found necessary in individual cases, dismissed.

The replenishment of the decimated book inventory was centrally in the hands of Winzer's education department of the still undivided magistrate, which is why many titles were purchased following his tendency. After the division of the magistrate into separate city administrations for the eastern and western sectors in November and December 1948, a separate library department was set up for the western sectors, which again started a sorting out of the western public libraries, this time concerning titles with communist-propagandistic or Soviet-glorifying tendencies.

It was not until 1950 that the holdings reached the size they had before the war (400,000 volumes). The Berlin City Library, which was located in East Berlin, resumed lending to the state general libraries in 1951. After 1952, extensive bibliographical publications began. Since then, the monthly bibliographic calendar sheets have been published and a journal evaluation has been developed, which has also been made available nationwide.

Reading room (March 1971)

The stocks found after the relocation in Poland and Czechoslovakia were returned to Berlin in 1953/1954. In 1953, the Berlin Medical Library and in 1955 the Council Library (formerly the Municipal Library) were incorporated into the Berlin City Library as specialist departments. Also in 1955, in addition to its function as a scientific general library, the Berlin City Library was given the task of a central library for the state general libraries of East Berlin. In 1958 a car library was set up to supply literature on the outskirts of Berlin. In 1969 the special departments Artothek and Diathek (collection of slides ) were opened, in 1973 a Linguathek (collection of language courses on records and tapes ).

After the reunification of Germany , the Berlin City Library (formerly East Berlin) and the America Memorial Library (formerly West Berlin) were merged in 1995 to form the Central and State Library Berlin (ZLB).

architecture

Overview

Adjacent Ribbeck House (1624, additional storey at the beginning of the 19th century), in the 21st century the city library's center for Berlin studies; the Ribbeck House is the only surviving Renaissance building in old Berlin
Adjacent old stables (1670), also part of the Berlin City Library

In 1961, the city council of East Berlin and the GDR Council of Ministers decided to build a new library in the Marstall complex after it had been cleared of rubble in the 1960s . Heinz Mehlan's collective of architects reconstructed the historic Spree wing and the repaired Old Marstall for library use. A newly built three-story low-rise building now connects both parts of the building and accommodates the lending center, reading rooms and catalogs. On October 11, 1966, the Extended Berlin City Library was opened as part of the Xth  Berlin Festival . The three-storey new building is deliberately set apart from the historical parts of the building with a glass facade.

The A portal by Fritz Kühn

Double door with an "A carpet" designed as the main entrance in the Breite Straße

The A-carpet completed in February 1967 forms the entrance portal to the Berlin City Library. It received its name because the area over each other in nine rows of 117 variations of the letter A is formed. From draft to execution, the work of art was created in the artist's workshop. The A – Variations were forged out of the panels with special tools , fused with brass and copper in a forge fire, e. T. blued or gold-plated and glazed at the end .

The metal designer and metal sculptor Fritz Kühn said about the symbolic power of the portal:

“The Berlin City Library - modern architecture - has been given its place between historical buildings. A connection should preferably be achieved by emphasizing the entrance. However, this had to be adapted to the straight, factual forms of today's architecture. So I tried to give the entrance portal of the Berlin City Library the expression of the valuable through craftsmanship in the language of our time. A modern scientific library of our time is not an exclusive literature museum that is only available to a select group of users. In the sense of the socialist cultural and educational striving, it is a place accessible to all people, which preserves the intellectual property, the scientific knowledge of the past and the present and makes it accessible for use in the service of human progress.
Pointing to the sense of the whole building, the special thing about the interior of the house, I chose the first letter of the alphabet, the A. In doing so, I allowed the many possibilities to show space, individuality and change in the course of time and languages. […] Since double-leaf doors do not fit well into the grid architecture of the building, the steel plates with the letters should cover the entire entrance like a carpet. The 117 steel plates did not allow any typeface to emerge - rather the designed letters have a symbolic character, they are symbols for the typeface in the broadest sense. "

Stocks

The holdings of the Central and State Library Berlin are divided according to subjects between the two buildings of the library. The following subject areas can be found in the Berlin City Library:

  • General. Reference books. Means of information
  • Berlin studies
  • Book and librarianship, information science
  • Historical collections
  • Computer science
  • Communal sciences
  • Communication and media
  • Agriculture
  • mathematics
  • medicine
  • Natural sciences
  • Law
  • Senate Library Berlin
  • Sports
  • technology
  • environment
  • economy

Directors

See also

literature

  • The Berlin City Library. Ceremony for the opening of their new building in October 1966 . Berlin City Library, Berlin 1966, DNB 456081593 .
  • Hilde Weise, Adolf Weser (Ed.): The Berlin City Library. History, function, performance. Berlin City Library, Berlin 1974, DNB 992769671 .
  • Petra Hätscher: Berlin's public library system from 1961 to 1989 , in: Library: Research and Practice , Vol. 19 (1995), No. 2, pp. 155–188.
  • Frauke Mahrt-Thomsen: 150 years: from the Berlin public libraries to the Kreuzberg city library; a chronicle , District Office Kreuzberg of Berlin / Library Office, District Office Kreuzberg of Berlin / Art Office Kreuzberg, District Office Kreuzberg of Berlin / Kreuzberg Museum and Association for Research and Presentation of the History of Kreuzberg (ed.), Berlin: District Office Kreuzberg von Berlin / Library Office, 2000.
  • Ulrike Wahlich: Looking back with a future. 100 years of the Central and State Library Berlin. With an afterword by Claudia Lux . Saur, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-598-11555-5 .
  • Waldemar Bonnell: The Berlin City Library . In: Mitteilungen des Verein für die Geschichte Berlins, Vol. 25 (1908), No. 8, pp. 207–210. Digitized by the Central and State Library Berlin https://digital.zlb.de/viewer/image/14688141_1908/219/

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stenographic reports on the public meetings of the city council of the capital and residence city of Berlin , 1901, p. 246.
  2. ^ Petra Hätscher: The public library system of Berlin from 1961 to 1989 ; P. 156.
  3. ^ Petra Hätscher: The public library system of Berlin from 1961 to 1989 ; P. 158.
  4. ↑ Frauke Mahrt-Thomsen: 150 years ...; a chronicle ; P. 17.
  5. ↑ a b Frauke Mahrt-Thomsen: 150 years; Chronicle ; P. 21.
  6. ^ Petra Hätscher: The public library system of Berlin from 1961 to 1989 ; P. 182.
  7. ↑ Frauke Mahrt-Thomsen: 150 years ...; a chronicle ; P. 22.
  8. ^ A b c Petra Hätscher: The public library system of Berlin from 1961 to 1989 ; P. 157.
  9. ↑ Frauke Mahrt-Thomsen: 150 years ...; a chronicle ; P. 26.
  10. ↑ a b Frauke Mahrt-Thomsen: 150 years: ...; a chronicle ; P. 25.
  11. ↑ a b Frauke Mahrt-Thomsen: 150 years ...; a chronicle ; P. 28.
  12. ↑ a b Joachim Schulz, Werner Gräbner: Architectural Guide GDR. Berlin. , VEB Verlag für Bauwesen Berlin, 1974. Pages 36 and 81: New Marstall and Old Marstall, Ribbeckhaus and City Library .
  13. ↑ Lit .: Weise, p. 79; Wahlich, pp. 127-128.
  14. ↑ Subject areas of the Berlin City Library