Mannheim City Library
| Mannheim City Library | |
|---|---|
 Town house, seat of the central library
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| founding | 1895 |
| Duration | 414.799 |
| Library type | library |
| place | Mannheim |
| ISIL | DE-1370 |
| Website | www.stadtbibliothek.mannheim.de |
The City Library Mannheim is the public library of the city of Mannheim . It owns around 415,000 media units. With more than 700,000 visitors a year, it is one of the most popular institutions in the city.
Organization and stocks
The city library is divided into the central library in the Mannheim town hall , the music library and the children's and youth library in the Dalberghaus as well as branches in the districts of Feudenheim , Friedrichsfeld , Herzogenried , Käfertal , Neckarau , Neckarstadt-West , Rheinau , Sandhofen , Schönau , Seckenheim and Vogelstang . The mobile library supplies the other parts of the city with a book bus .
In total, more than 410,000 media are available in the city library, including 137,000 in the central library in the city hall alone, including 33,000 fine literature , 87,000 non-fiction and specialist books, 6,900 AV media and 180 newspaper and magazine subscriptions. The branches have between 8,000 and 25,000 media. In addition, 60 PCs with Internet access are provided.
The fire pen is awarded every two years , a three-month scholarship for children's and young people's literature.
The music library has around 40,000 media, including books, sheet music, magazines, CDs, DVDs, CD-ROMs and records. Special collection areas are Mannheim school , Mannheim music and composers . Part of Theodore Spiering's estate is also located here .
The city library is supported by eleven development associations. The district libraries in particular are supported by voluntary citizens.
history
library
The oldest preserved book collection goes to the relocation of the residence of the Electors of the Palatinate of Heidelberg to Mannheim in 1720 back. When the Electoral Palatinate was broken up in 1803, however, the largest stock was moved to Munich. Another deep turning point came when numerous books had to be handed over to the Badische Hofbibliothek in Karlsruhe in 1857 . The library housed in Mannheim Palace owned 60,000 volumes around 1900 and, in addition to the remnants of the Palatinate court library, had the former library of the Mannheim Jesuits and the books of several bibliophile collectors from bequests. From 1869 it was run as a public library. Later it was the city's scientific library and then merged into the Mannheim University Library .
In order to promote popular education, Lord Mayor Otto Beck initiated the establishment of a further library that should appeal to broad sections of the population. It was organized as an association, but received municipal grants. Its establishment in 1895 established today's city library. Initially housed in the schoolhouse at the Konkordienkirche in square R2 , it moved in 1916 to the representative new building of the Herschelbad . In 1922 the association was dissolved due to financial problems and the public library was taken over by the city. In 1931, a branch with open access was opened for the first time in Schwetzingerstadt . There was a turning point in the time of National Socialism . From 1933 the books by Jewish and “Marxist” authors were removed from the inventory. The library was also not spared the destruction of the Second World War . In total, the public library and the music library lost 38,000 volumes.
In the subsequent reconstruction, branches were now set up in the districts as planned. From 1951 a book bus also drove. The main office was able to move into the restored Dalberghaus in 1961. The book inventory and the number of readers continued to grow, so that in 1991 it was housed in the new town hall on Paradeplatz . At the same time, however, due to the tight budget situation in the city of Mannheim, savings measures also began. Some of the branches were closed and others could only be prevented because volunteers caught the downsizing. In 2007 the Metropol-Card was introduced, which enables borrowing in the Mannheim and Ludwigshafen city libraries . Since 2009, the offer has been extended to the city libraries in Frankenthal and Speyer as well as to the community library in Brühl.
Bernhard Kahn reading room
In 1903 the Association for Popular Education was founded in Mannheim. In 1905 the widow of old town councilor Bernhard Kahn bequeathed 60,000 marks to the association, which opened a public reading hall in the Neckarstadt district the following year. The first leader was Berta Hirsch . The Kahn family, especially Otto Hermann Kahn , who lived in New York , also regularly donated money until 1933 for the expansion and operation that was required in 1910 . In the course of the “ Gleichschaltung ”, the National Socialists attached the reading room as a branch to the public library and erased the name Bernhard Kahn. In 1943 the building was completely destroyed during a bomb attack. In 1952, the city opened a youth library in Neckarstadt, which two years later was expanded into a full-fledged branch. In 1971 it moved back to its old location and since 1973 the name "Bernhard-Kahn-Bücherei" has been reminiscent of the donor family.
Music library
The impetus for a music library came from a lecture at the music academy by the music writer and cultural philosopher Paul Marsop , who is considered the founding father of two dozen such institutions. The musical public library, organized as a community foundation, was opened in January 1914 with the support of the city. In 1930 she was the first in Germany to set up a record archive. Three years later it was taken over by the city, but remained an independent organizational unit. It lost all of its holdings during a bombing raid in 1943. In 1950 the music library, now a department of the city library, was reopened. The Mannheim School Collection was built up from 1960, the Mannheim music history from 1800 from the 1970s and the special collection of women composers from 1981.
Children's and youth library
The Bernhard Kahn reading hall, which opened in 1906, already had two children's reading rooms, a novelty in Germany at the time. In 1929 the city set up a youth library in the Lameyhaus in R7. The target group were the 10 to 16 year old children. This library was also completely destroyed in 1943. After the Second World War, care was taken to ensure that the new branches in the city districts had their own children's and youth departments in order to ensure that supplies were available close to home. After the central library moved out in 1991, the central children's and youth library remained in the Dalberghaus and was able to expand its premises.
literature
- Willi Wendling: The Mannheimer Städtische Volks- und Musikbücherei 1895–1961 . Mannheim 1961
- Ernst Abraham: 100 Years of the Mannheim City Library 1895–1995 . Mannheim 1995
- Bernhard Fabian (Hrsg.): Handbook of the historical book inventory . Hildesheim 2003, ISBN 3-487-11711-8