Magdeburg City Library

Magdeburg City Library
	; Magdeburg City Library, Central Library
founding	1525
Duration	approx. 380,000 media
Library type	Public library
place	Magdeburg coordinates: 52 ° 8 '12.7 " N , 11 ° 38' 19.9" E
ISIL	DE-73 (Magdeburg City Library)
operator	State capital Magdeburg
management	Cornelia Poenicke
Website	www.magdeburg-stadtbibliothek.de

The Magdeburg City Library is a public cultural and service facility of the state capital Magdeburg . It consists of the central library, three district libraries and a mobile library. With around 300,000 visitors per year and around 1.1 million loans, it is the largest public library in Saxony-Anhalt .

Inventory, catalogs

approx. 380,000 media, including
approx. 141,000 non-fiction and specialist books
approx. 70,000 novels (fiction)
approx. 40,000 children's books
approx. 31,000 CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs
approx. 37,000 audio books

as well as newspapers, magazines, sheet music, maps, CD-ROMs, records and e-media.

Special collections

The Magdeburg City Library has a historical inventory of printed products from five centuries (approx. 80,000 media)

Magdeburgica / Regionalia

"Magdeburgica" is a collection of publications about Magdeburg and the Magdeburg region. Representations of personalities who were associated with Magdeburg are also taken into account. This inventory comprises around 80,000 volumes; about 7000 volumes are old holdings (up to 1945).

Early prints / Reformation publications / prints from the 16th century

250 writings from the time when Magdeburg was one of the early centers of the Lutheran Reformation are preserved in the city library. In total, the city library can access over 500 writings from the 16th century.

Historical children's books

Collection contains children's books from the 18th to 20th centuries Century (until 1945), as well as children's books from the GDR era. (Approx. 6000 volumes)

Shellac record collection

The private collection - a gift from the musicologist Willi Maertens , Nestor of Telemannforschung in Magdeburg - comprises 24 works (92 records) from world musical literature.

GDR literature

A GDR archive was set up to document life in the GDR and to make its testimonies available to those interested in science; it includes works of fiction, specialist literature and specialist journals.

Catalogs and databases

WWW-OPAC of the Magdeburg City Library - research in the entire media offer of the City Library, advance ordering of borrowed titles and extensions
Chargeable internet places
"Digital library" database in the central library
Saxony-Anhalt online library

The Magdeburg City Library operates a branch on the Internet together with other public libraries. Books, audio books, music, films and magazines can be downloaded from the Saxony-Anhalt online library, which contains more than 15,000 media. The internet branch is open around the clock. The loan is limited in time and there are no fees.

Branch offices, book bus

Mobile library

The mobile library has existed since 1975. The bus runs regularly to parts of the city without a permanent branch and to the outskirts. It provides adults, children and young people with media from all areas of interest. The available stock is continuously supplemented by new publications. With its own stock of magazines, visitors have a larger range at their disposal than the mobile library can offer at each stop.

Florapark district library

The Florapark district library in the shopping center (1st floor) supplies the northern part of the city. The handicapped themed library has around 25,000 books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs and audio books for loan. The focus is on fiction with current entertainment literature, books and media for children and events such as readings, exhibitions, reading competitions for school classes and holiday programs.

District library reform

The district library Reform in the center of the district of the same name supplies the residents as well as the schools. The library has around 20,000 books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs and audio books available for loan. Value is placed on fiction and reading promotion in cooperation with schools in the Reform and Hopfengarten districts .

District library Sudenburg

The district library Sudenburg on Halberstädter Str. / Near Südring supplies the residents of Sudenburg as well as Buckau, Ottersleben, Leipziger Str. The library holds around 16,000 books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, Blu-Ray discs and audio books for loan. Value is placed on entertainment literature, travel guides, advice and cooperation with other extracurricular learning locations in the district.

history

Early modern age

The Magdeburg City Library was originally founded during the Reformation. Its earliest holdings - around 45 manuscripts and around 150 incunabula - go back to the property of the local Augustinian monastery. This monastery was handed over by the convent of the monastery to the council of the city of Magdeburg in November 1525: The monastery library also became the property of the city. Following Luther's request to the councilors of all cities in Germany to set up Christian schools and "Libereya", a Protestant city school, later the old town high school, was founded in Magdeburg in 1524/1525. This school was moved to the monastery itself after the monastery was transferred to the city; the book holdings of the monastery remained on site and became the basis of the later school library. This high school library then became the council library, but kept its location in the school. The holdings grew through the disputes of the Reformation, through the printing trade, which also flourished in Magdeburg at the time, and the authors of the Magdeburg Centuries, who wanted to write a (church) history from a Protestant perspective and collected corresponding literature. The book holdings were either marked with a corresponding ex-libris (city coat of arms with rose), or from 1591 the coat of arms with virgin was fitted on the front cover: "The book belongs to a deserving council of the old city of Magdeburg Librei."

The library was seriously neglected in the 17th century and decimated during the Thirty Years' War, but it remained in the Augustinian monastery until the beginning of the 18th century. It was not until 1708 that the inventory of approx. 700 - 800 works was moved to the town hall and thus finally converted from the school library into a “city library”: For the 18th century, acquisitions, gifts, administrative costs, bookbinding costs, a lending journal and also a personal one are for the first time Proven support. It was also common for city councils and other city officials to “donate” a book or the equivalent of a book to the library when they took office. Little is known about the use of the library in the following years, but all the more about financial problems with part-time librarians who obviously privatized books and fiduciary funds. In 1811, for reasons of space, the library was packed in boxes and taken to the town hall floor. The "city bookstore" became a meeting room.

19th century

It was only with Georg Friedrich Gerloff as librarian and August Wilhelm Francke as lord mayor that the library was made fully accessible to the public in 1827, although it consisted largely of administrative literature. An inventory catalog was drawn up, a modest budget of its own was introduced and fixed opening times were offered. Approx. 12,000 volumes were available; however, the library room could not be heated in winter, so that the use remained low. Only in the second half of the 19th century did the conditions improve with school councilor Wolterstorff as the library manager. B. separated the public authority library from the general public library and thus created an educational institution for the educated classes by the turn of the century. Only after the turn of the century did the library move into new rooms at the Hauptwache / City Hall in 1908. In addition, public libraries were set up as branches in important parts of the city (Northern Front, Wilhelmstadt, Sudenburg and Buckau). With the increasing educational intention in the city administration and the population, the staff was increased, the book budget increased and the opening hours extended.

20th century

In the civil service and military city of Magdeburg, the library system subsequently developed positively at the beginning of the 20th century; During the Weimar period, for example, the company's 400th anniversary was celebrated, a group of friends was founded, and the integration of many small specialist libraries and donations from private libraries in the city expanded the stock considerably (around 110,000 publications around 1930).

With the National Socialists in 1933 there was not only a massive purge of the literature, but also a new building for the (scientific) city library: When the Masonic lodges were banned in 1933, the Magdeburg lodge "Ferdinand zur Glückseligkeit" was also closed and its lodge building was forcibly sold the city over. After renovations and extensions in 1934, the city library was quartered in Neuen Weg 6/7 (later Weitlingstraße 1a) and for the first time in its history, the expropriated Masonic villa was given its own building near the town hall. It remained here until 1998. When the war began in 1939, there were air raids on major German cities, and Magdeburg reacted by relocating its most valuable cultural assets. The valuable old stocks were moved to salt mines, Wernigerode Castle and surrounding aristocratic houses. The city library building was largely destroyed, as was the book inventory.

With the reconstruction after 1945, however, only a small part of the outsourced books could be returned. Manuscripts, incunabula and works from the 16th and 17th centuries were brought to the relocation sites on a large scale by the trophy commissions of the Red Army and the SMAD as spoils of war in the Soviet Union. During the GDR period, they were long thought to be lost or burned, but some of them have now reappeared in Russian libraries or in libraries in the CIS countries and are traceable. - So came z. B. also returned less important contingents from Georgia and Armenia in 1996 and 2000.

Reconstruction of the library building soon began after 1945, and a large network of branches was added during the GDR era. The holdings were increased again with GDR literature, but also in the 1950s with valuable literature that was requisitioned during the land reform. However, these could not replace the Magdeburgica and Regionalia, some of which were collected over centuries and lost in 1945.

The building itself remained a construction site for decades during the GDR era, was extremely cramped as a central library and was not developed as a purpose-built library. At the same time, the “city and district library” was a cultural and educational institution with public relations work during the GDR era. Since moving into the central library building in 1999, the city library has been a service facility in a central location with a branch network, a mobile library and a "virtual branch" on the Internet. It sees its focus with the children's library, foreign language department, music library, video library, digital media etc. as an educational institution for lifelong learning.

Accommodation

When, after the fall of the Wall, an application for restitution submitted by the re-admitted Masonic lodges was successful in 1995, the villa was transferred back to the former owners, and high rental costs were incurred for the previously communal building. The city council therefore passed a new building resolution in 1997, and instead the city bought the former C&A department store on Breiten Weg 109, which was converted in 1998 into a modern, functional and spacious central library on 6000 m².

circle of friends

In September 2011, the Friends of the Magdeburg City Library was re-established, after the Peaceful Revolution of 1989/90 the "Society of Friends of the Magdeburg City Library eV" was active.

literature

by Vincenti, Arthur: History of the Magdeburg City Library. 1525 - 1925. Festschrift for the 400th anniversary. Magdeburg, 1925 (Petersen)
Petsch, Peter (Ed.): Books as booty. On the history of the city library between 1925 and 1999, Halle, 2000 (MDV)
Petsch, Peter / Wiehle, Martin: 1525 - 2000. 475 years of the city library. In: Magdeburg. Portrait of a City, Halle, 2004, p. 581 ff (Stekovic)
Schilling, Michael (Ed.): Printed tho Magdeborch. 16th century books from Magdeburg. Magdeburg 2013.
Ballerstedt / Petsch / Puhle (ed.): Magdeburg prints of the 16th century. Halle, 2009 (MVD)
Pfeiffer, Rüdiger (Hrsg.): The sound world between book spines, music volumes and sound carriers. Festschrift for the 50th anniversary of the music library of the Magdeburg City Library. Halberstadt, 2002
Petsch, Peter: Missing books in the Magdeburg City Library. In: mb. Bulletin of the libraries in Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, No. 88/89 (1993), p. 49 ff
Petsch, Peter (Ed.): Magdeburg Newspapers. The newspaper collection of the Magdeburg City Library - A catalog. Magdeburg, 2004 (Delta-D-Verlag)
Society of Friends of the Magdeburg City Library eV (Hrsg.): Treasures of the Magdeburg City Library. Magdeburg, 1992
Magdeburg City Library (Ed.): The Magdeburg City Library through the ages 1525 - 2000. Published on the occasion of the 475th anniversary of the Magdeburg City Library. Magdeburg, 2000
Bonewitz, Cordula: Historical children's books of the Magdeburg City Library. Annotated selection catalog. Magdeburg, 1996
Petsch, Peter: The return of land reform cultural property in the Magdeburg City Library. In: mb. Bulletin of the libraries in Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, issue 142/143 (2010), p. 17 ff
Krause, Friedhilde (Ed.): Handbook of the historical book collections in Germany, Vol. 22, Saxony-Anhalt, Magdeburg City Library, p. 128 ff, Hildesheim, 2000 (Olms)
Neubauer, Ernst: History of the city library of Magdeburg. In: Geschichtsblätter Vol. 45, 1910, pp. 1 ff
Petsch, Peter: Who builds a house ...: Formerly C&A - Magdeburg City Library in the new building. In: BuB, No. 9 (1999), p. 571 ff