Josef Becker (librarian)

Josef Becker , actually Joseph Becker , (born August 15, 1883 in Undenheim , † August 17, 1949 in Berlin ) was a German librarian.

After attending grammar school in Benzheim, Becker studied history, philosophy and German in Freiburg and Munich. In 1906 he received his doctorate in Munich with a thesis on Liutprand von Cremona and in the same year passed the state examination for teaching. For the Monumenta Germaniae Historica he published the works of Liutprand in 1915. Becker worked as a teacher at grammar schools in Posen and Rogasen until 1915 and then did military service until 1918. After the end of the First World War he entered the higher library service in 1919, first in the University Library of Marburg , in 1920 at the Prussian State Library in Berlin, and in 1921 at the University Library in Göttingen . In 1925 he became the deputy director of the Wroclaw University Library . In 1929 he took over the management of the Wroclaw City Library . In 1933 Becker went to Göttingen University Library as director, only to move to the Prussian State Library as first director (deputy director general) two years later. He lost this position at the end of the war. In 1948, a year before his death, he took over the management of the university library at the Technical University of Berlin .

Becker's work at the Berlin State Library mainly dates back to the Second World War, when on the one hand he organized the relocation of library holdings to numerous locations, and on the other hand he was responsible for book holdings stolen in Czechoslovakia. In the early 1940s he was appointed acting head of the national and university libraries in Prague. In 1942 he became an honorary professor at Berlin University.

literature

• Alexandra Habermann, Rainer Klemmt, Frauke Siefkes: Lexicon of German Scientific Librarians 1925–1980 (= Journal for Libraries and Bibliography. Special Issues 42). Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-465-01664-5 , p. 14.

Web links

• Literature by and about Josef Becker in the catalog of the German National Library
• Personal form from Josef Becker in the personnel file of the BIL expert body in the archive database of the Library for Research on Educational History (BBF)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sören Flachowsky: " Armory for the swords of the spirit". The Deutsche Bücherei during the Nazi era . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3196-9 , p. 1006.

predecessor	Office	successor
Richard Fuck	Director of the Göttingen University Library 1933–1935	Karl Julius Hartmann