State and University Library Königsberg

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New university library (1901)

The Königsberg University Library was an outstanding collection center of German literature in East Central Europe .

history

The founding of the state, Duke Albrecht of Prussia , provided the basis for this when the palace library was founded in 1527. It was the first library in Europe to open to the public in 1534 before the Bodleiana in Oxford and the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan .

The library received valuable growth, especially in manuscripts, with the abolition of the Order Library in Tapiau . The university library thus benefited from a double base from the ducal period, to which the holdings from the order library were added. Taken together, they shaped their profile primarily in the manuscript and early printing sectors. In 1583 the ducal chamber library and in 1611 the silver library were taken. With the transition of East Prussia to the House of Brandenburg in 1618, a phase of stagnation occurred because the Brandenburgers sponsored the Berlin library. In the 18th century, the university library acquired its own profile alongside the palace library. She survived the Seven Years' War and the Russian occupation without major losses.

With the relocation of the Kgl. Library from the west wing of the palace to the royal house (Königstrasse 65/67) in 1810 a new phase began. The royal house also housed the university library, the Königsberg city library (in the north wing of the Albertinum in 1875) and the Keyserling library (in 1821 in Rautenberg). The library in the royal family had a stock of just over 20,000 volumes. At the same time, there was an important innovation in administrative policy. The castle library was subordinated to the university. This created the prerequisites for the merger with the university library. The Royal Library and the University Library were combined to form the Royal and University Library in 1828 , after both libraries had already come under one roof with the move. In 1890 the Kgl. and university library 263,636 volumes. Friedrich August Gotthold alone left 55,000 books in the library. Your new building was built in 1901 in Mitteltragheim 22.

In 1909 a large part of the Wallenrodt library was added. The duplicates remained in the south tower of Königsberg Cathedral , in the historic reading room. This made the library the leading aristocratic and official library in the country.

The yearbook of the German libraries identified it as one of the most important libraries in the Reich: in the last inventory in 1943, it recorded 695,067 individual volumes, 710 incumbents and 4,587 manuscripts.

Directors

The Royal Library

Destruction and dispersion

During the Second World War , the most valuable holdings were moved to surrounding castles and manor houses until the beginning of 1944. The duplicates in the cathedral burned during the air raids on Königsberg in August 1944. After the end of the war, several Soviet, Lithuanian, Belarusian and Polish expert commissions set out for East Prussia to look for books and art treasures. So it came about that the holdings of the university library are now distributed among the following institutions:

literature

  • Julius Petzholdt : Handbook of German Libraries . Halle 1853, p. 213 ff. ( Digitized version )
  • Heinrich Zell: The Royal and University Library to Königsberg i. Pr. Koenigsberg 1901.
  • Ernst Kuhnert : History of the state and university library to Königsberg. From its foundation to the year 1810 . Leipzig 1926.
  • Fritz Juntke : History of the von Wallenrodtschen library . Leipzig 1927.
  • Christian Krollmann : The castle library in Königsberg . In: Altpreußische Forschungen 4 (1927) pp. 128–149.
  • Alfred Rohde : The silver library of Duke Albrecht in Königsberg . Gräfe and Unzer , Königsberg 1928.
  • Manfred Komorowski : The fate of the state and university library Königsberg , in: Library research and practice. Volume 4 (1980), pages 139-154 full text
  • Gerhart Lohse: The library directors of the former Prussian universities and technical colleges 1900-1985 , Cologne, Vienna 1988, pp. 106–111.
  • Catalog of medieval German-language manuscripts from the former state and university library in Königsberg. In addition to descriptions of the medieval German-language fragments of the former State Archives in Königsberg. On the basis of the preliminary work by Ludwig Denecke , developed by Ralf G. Päsler, ed. by Uwe Meves , Munich 2000.
  • Robert Albinus: Königsberg Lexicon. City and surroundings . Flechsig, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-88189-441-1 .
  • Klaus Garber, Axel E. Walter: Biblioteka Kaliningradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Library of the Kaliningrad State University (Koenigsberg) . In: Handbook of the historical book inventory in Germany . Digitized by Günter Kükenshöner. Edited by Bernhard Fabian . Hildesheim: Olms Neue Medien 2003. Full text
  • Ralf G. Päsler: On the manuscript holdings of the former state and university library in Königsberg. Source repertory and new location directory , in: Scriptorium 61.1 (2007), pp. 198–217.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The royal house later became the Prussia Museum
  2. ^ Karl: Historical street directory of the city of Königsberg i. Pr ., Hamburg 1964
  3. ^ Library of the Kaliningrad State University (Fabian Handbook)

Coordinates: 54 ° 43 ′ 2 ″  N , 20 ° 30 ′ 48 ″  E