Franz Georg Kaltwasser

Franz Georg Kaltwasser (born November 6, 1927 in Nordhausen ; † November 18, 2011 ) was a German librarian and director of the Bavarian State Library from 1972 to 1992 .

Career

Kaltwasser was born as the son of the graduate engineer Georg Kaltwasser. During his childhood the family moved to Nuremberg, where he attended the high school for boys on Loebleinstrasse . At fifteen and a half he was hired as an anti-aircraft helper and at sixteen he had to stop school when his anti-aircraft battery was sent to Silesia. In the spring of 1945 he was part of Wenck's Army , which was given the impossible task of breaking through the Soviet lines from Berlin. Instead, the army turned to the west, at Tangermünde in May 1945 Kaltwasser was among the many soldiers who were able to cross the Elbe so that they would not end up in Soviet but in American captivity. Dismissed quickly, he was able to take the secondary school diploma in 1946 .

Kaltwasser first studied Catholic theology at the University of Bamberg , and then moved to the University of Munich , where he studied Catholic theology, philosophy and psychology. In April 1953 he was at the Philosophical Faculty with Aloys Wenzl with the dissertation The concept of free will. An examination of the concept of freedom since Kant received his doctorate. His first job was as a lecturer for a school book publisher, but after only a year he started as a trainee lawyer at the Bavarian State Library (BSB). There he spent most of his professional life, initially in the manuscript department. From 1958 to 1961 he headed the Coburg State Library and then returned to the BSB in Munich, where he worked as a consultant for electronic data processing from the mid-1960s and as head of the catalog department from 1968.

Director of the Bavarian State Library

In 1972, he succeeded Hans Striedl as director of the BSB and managed it until his retirement in 1992. Kaltwasser took over the BSB when the post-war reconstruction was essentially complete. The recovery of war losses continued, however. The central theme of Kaltwasser's term of office was the “determined expansion of the Bavarian State Library as a research library”. He himself called his task: “To lead the traditional and richly equipped library into the age determined by technology.” This resulted in a doubling of the New acquisitions per year. During these years the magazine department became the largest in Germany and number two in Europe after the British Library . This was supported by the computer-aided indexing of the holdings. Under Kaltwassers direction, the early beginnings of the electronic catalogs became the Bavarian Union Catalog , the old stocks were successively recorded electronically, a process that continued long after his tenure and could only be completed in 2005.

For Kaltwasser, the role of the research library also meant the functional separation of the supply of literature for students and matters other than science and the profession. The demarcation from the Munich University Library , which is diagonally opposite on Ludwigsstrasse , was made more difficult by the fact that the university library was insufficiently equipped, which is why students used the BSB as a “student library” . He felt this was a burden on the job opportunities for scientists. In this context, efforts were made to promote the proportion of face- to-face use compared to lending.

When Kaltwassers retired in 1992, Hermann Leskien became his successor. In retirement, Kaltwasser never gave up on his big topic. In a book published in 2006 about the changing roles of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in particular, he complained about a "disappearing profile" of the BSB and developed a future model in which he differentiated between pure research libraries on the one hand and undergraduate libraries for students on the other. He was guided by the relationship between the mass universities and the non-university research landscape with Max Planck Institutes .

Wolfgang Frühwald wrote about cold water:

“He looked after the“ organism ”library for many decades and saved it into a time when the“ future addicts ”thought they could do without it altogether. [...] He developed [the Bayerische Staatsbiliothek], made it accessible and at the same time saved it from damage by modernist ideologies. "

- Foreword to Kaltwasser 2007, pp. VIII – IX

In 1992 he received the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class .

Publications (selection)

• The library as a museum. From the Renaissance to today, illustrated using the example of the Bavarian State Library . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1999, ISBN 3-447-03863-2 .
• Bayerische Staatsbibliothek - changing understanding of roles over the centuries . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 978-3-447-05322-8 .
• Library work - selected essays. With a list of publications from 1953 to 2007 . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-447-05627-4 .

literature

• Rolf Griebel : In Memoriam Dr. Franz Georg Kaltwasser . In: Bibliotheksforum Bayern 2012, 6, pp. 135-137 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Franz Georg Kaltwasser in the catalog of the German National Library
• Obituaries

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Jürgen Busche : Not just reading . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 29, 1984, p. 12.
2. ↑ The curriculum vitae is largely based on the foreword by Wolfgang Frühwald in: Kaltwasser 2007.
3. ↑ ^{a b} The interview: Franz Georg Kaltwasser , Süddeutsche Zeitung of November 24, 1992.
4. ↑ Wolfgang Frühwald in Kaltwasser 2007
5. ↑ Kaltwasser 1972 in his inaugural address as director of the BSB. Printed in Kaltwasser 2007, p. 1.
6. ↑ Kaltwasser 2007, p. 40.
7. ↑ Wolfgang Frühwald in the foreword to Kaltwasser 2007, p. XI.
8. ↑ Kaltwasser 2007, p. 40 ff.
9. ↑ Kaltwasser 1992 when he passed it. Printed in Kaltwasser 2007, p. 44.
10. ↑ in detail in Kaltwasser 2006, Chapter 7: The supply of literature for students 1972–1992 , pp. 106–129.
11. ↑ Kaltwasser 2006, pp. 137–141, 262 ff.
12. ↑ Kaltwasser 2006, pp. 141–146.
13. ↑ Kaltwasser 2006, p. 245 f.