Neukölln City Library

Neukölln City Library
Entrance to the city library in the Neukölln Arcaden
founding	1906
Duration	296,697
Library type	library
place	Berlin coordinates: 52 ° 28 ′ 56.6 ″  N , 13 ° 25 ′ 57 ″  E
ISIL	DE-B700 (Helene Nathan Library, district central library)
operator	District Office Neukölln
management	Evelyn Stussak
Website	www.berlin.de/stadtbibliothek-neukoelln

The Neukölln City Library is a public library system sponsored by the Neukölln District Office , Department of Education, School, Culture and Sport, Department of Libraries. The administration is in the Helene-Nathan-Bibliothek. The library has a media inventory of around 300,000, which were borrowed around 1.5 million times by 506,000 visitors in 2018. In addition, the library organized over 2000 events, tours and exhibitions during the same period.

history

As early as 1894, the teacher Wilhelm Kluke set up a public loan with 700 books in the basement of a community school in Rixdorf (today Neukölln). In 1906, the Rixdorf community took over the library, which already contained 4,500 volumes and was constantly being expanded. New rooms were moved into in what was then Bergstrasse, today Karl-Marx-Strasse. In 1914 the library was able to move into the building of the public swimming pool with library in Ganghoferstraße . In 1921 Helene Nathan (1885–1940) took over the library management and continuously expanded the library despite financial problems. She was particularly interested in youth library work . Due to their political commitment and their Jewish origins, Nathan and other employees were given leave of absence with immediate effect in March 1933 after Hitler came to power and fired on August 20 of the same year. In the library, more than 5000 volumes of unwanted literature were sorted into a "blocked library" and replaced with " National Socialist literature ".

After the end of the war , the holdings were "cleaned up" and the old holdings that had previously been sorted out in the "blocked library" were made available again. In the 1960s, the new building on Erlanger Strasse was ready to move into, where the adult, music and youth library were now housed under one roof. In 1989 the main library on Erlanger Strasse was named "Helene-Nathan-Bibliothek" in memory of the library director who was driven to suicide by the Nazis.

The Neukölln Arcaden were built on the property of the library on Erlanger Straße from 1997 , which is why the library had to move to an alternative quarter in Kreuzberg . In 2000 the library moved to the two upper floors in the Neukölln Arcaden.

profile

The focus is on further education and training as well as language acquisition . Accordingly, there are offers in the Helene-Nathan-Bibliothek for classes in lower secondary level to get to know the media offer and for class levels 10 to prepare for the MSA . Homework help up to upper secondary level is available from Monday to Friday. The learning center with its offers is aimed specifically at schoolchildren from grade 7 to high school. Special tours / events are offered for each grade level.

Facilities

There are currently four different facilities throughout the district.

Library locations in the Neukölln district

	address	District	Duration
District central library Helene-Nathan-Bibliothek	Karl-Marx-Strasse 66, 12043 Berlin	Neukölln	180,000
Britz Süd district library	Gutschmidtstrasse 33, 12359 Berlin	Britz	42,000
District library in the community center	Bat-Yam-Platz 1, 12353 Berlin	Gropiusstadt	33,500
Rudow district library	Bildhauerweg 9, 12355 Berlin	Rudow	35,000

The Neukölln City Library participates in the Association of Public Libraries in Berlin (VÖBB) and is connected to the nationwide interlibrary loan system.

New library building in Rudow

New library building in Alt-Rudow March 2020

Since July 2016, the new building of the Rudow district library has been under construction in Alt-Rudow 45 according to the plans of the architect Wieland Vajen, which is to replace the district library in the Clay School at Bildhauerweg 9. The library is planned for 70,000 visitors and around 150,000 loans per year and is to have a reading café in the garden. The construction costs should be around 2.4 million euros. The opening date was planned for mid-2018, but has been postponed again and again. The construction is also a training project of the Spandau Upper School Center for Structural Engineering, whose students take over part of the work.

As there were repeated delays, the company responsible for the plant and safety technology stopped work in December 2018 and terminated the contract. Because of this, the work must be re-tendered and a new company commissioned, which will result in considerable additional costs. A date for the completion is not yet in sight.

media

The media inventory in 2018 was 296,697 media units with a large proportion of DVDs and audio books . In a separate language center there are foreign-language media for learning German or another language. The library also has e-book readers that can be borrowed , electronic and conventional games and a large number of newspapers and magazines in several languages, but these cannot be borrowed.

The music library in the Helene-Nathan-Bibliothek offers a differentiated media inventory of approx. 43,000 media units, including a wide range of practical music editions , scores , piano reductions and instrumental schools in addition to the heavily frequented CD, DVD and CD-ROM collection .

Cooperation partner

• The Alpha-Bündnis Neukölln organizes a library tour once a month in cooperation with the LernLaden Neukölln to give adults with limited written language skills access to books.
• Once a month, the LernLaden Neukölln offers free advice on the topics of learning to read, graduation, further education, career entry and learning German.

gallery

• 

  Neukölln Arcaden Seat of the “Helene-Nathan-Bibliothek”

• 

  Britz Süd district library

• 

  District library in the community center

• 

  Entrance to the "Helene Nathan Library"

• 

  Rudow district library

• 

  former “Helene-Nathan-Bibliothek” in Erlanger Strasse

literature

• Claudia von Gélieu : Pioneering Neukölln women: From the Britz princess to the first city councilor. Trafo Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89626-148-7 , pages 173-179.
• Ursula Brunner, Frank Grohe: On the roof from the cellar . 100 years of Neukölln City Library 1906–2006. Ed .: Dorothea Kolland. Office for Culture and Libraries Neukölln, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-9809348-3-7 .

Web links

Commons : Neukölln City Library  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Neukölln City Library. In: berlin.de. Retrieved March 4, 2020 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Annual report 2018 Berlin public libraries (PDF file; 3.2 MB)
2. ↑ Topping- out ceremony for the new library: opening planned for 2019. In: berliner-woche.de. March 9, 2018, accessed March 8, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Madlen Haarbach: Neuköllner Mini-BER: Why the construction work on the library in Alt-Rudow is on hold. In: tagesspiegel.de . March 6, 2019, accessed March 8, 2020 . 
4. ↑ Author: Alpha Alliance Neukölln. In: alphabuendnis-neukoelln.de. November 1, 2016, accessed March 6, 2020 . 
5. ↑ Advice on education & careers in the LernLaden® Neukölln - GesBiT. In: gesbit.de. February 28, 2020, accessed March 6, 2020 .