Rostock City Library

Rostock City Library
	;
founding	1894
Duration	approx. 140,000 media
Library type	library
place	Rostock
ISIL	DE-286
Website	www.stadtbibliothek-rostock.de

The Rostock City Library was founded in 1894 and has a stock of around 140,000 media. In addition to the central library at Kröpeliner Straße 82, the Rostock City Library maintains five branch libraries.

history

The library was founded in 1894 as a public library. It emerged from a privately owned library. This public library was the first of its kind in Rostock. In 1905 the “Rostocker Gemeinnützige Gesellschaft” took over the management of the library and re-established it at the old location under the name “public book and reading hall” in Wismarschen Strasse 64. The People's Library was enlarged in 1919 when the “Municipal People's Library” was opened on October 1, 1919 by a resolution of the local council. This was created as a merger of the public library of the Rostock non-profit society and libraries of several unions. A year later and until 1932, the Rostocker Volksbücherei was one of the largest libraries in the country. It had around 13,000 volumes (1932). The central library opened in 1932 at 18 Breiten Straße was destroyed by the bombing raids during the Second World War in 1942, but a large part of the collection was preserved. This stock had been severely reduced by restructuring during the Nazi era.

After the end of the war in 1945, under Soviet leadership, the reconstruction and clearing of what they believed to be fascist and militarist literature began . 4,400 volumes were sorted out. The new central library in Richard-Wagner-Straße 1a opened on October 1, 1945 with a stock of 7,700 volumes. On August 1, 1946, free lending was introduced, which is still in existence today.

After the founding of the GDR, the library system was restructured by the Ministry of Culture . In this context, the public library was re-established in 1954 as the “Rostock City and District Library”. In this function, the city library maintained up to 27 branches in Rostock until the turn of 1989/90 .

In 1957 the central library had to move again because the building on Richard-Wagner-Straße was classified as dilapidated. Until the opening of the new central library in the medieval gabled house at Kröpeliner Straße 82, the holdings were distributed over several branches. On July 11, 1966, the city library was named after Willi Bredel and was henceforth called "Willi Bredel Library, Rostock City and District Library".

Since the gabled house had to be cleared for reconstruction in 1989, a small collection of the central library was distributed among several branches. The largest part of the inventory was stored due to lack of space. The reconstruction work on the gabled house lasted until 1992. In February 1992 the central library of the newly named “Rostock City Library” was able to resume operations. In the course of further renovation work between 1999 and 2000, a computerized library system was set up, which replaced the photo-mechanical lending facility .

The "gable house"

The late Gothic brick building, "Haus Ratschow" at Kröpeliner Straße 82, was built at the end of the 15th century and has graced Rostock city center ever since.

The building is an eye-catcher thanks to the decorated stepped gable above the two-storey substructure. The crenellated outline of the gable and the frieze band made of lion and rosette shaped stones are accompanied by staggered pointed arches and circular screens with scenes of passion in the arches.

The city of Rostock acquired the building in 1910 from Ernst Ratschow (1865–1937), who retained the tenancy rights for his linen, linen and bedding business. The house was spared the bombing raids on Rostock during World War II, but was infected by liberated forced laborers on May 3, 1945 and burned down to the gable facade. Because of the numerous destruction in the city, the building was left to Hans Ratschow (1907–1987), who had taken over the business from his father, by way of heritable building rights. From 1950 Hans Ratschow had the building rebuilt behind the facade. In 1961 the Rostock City Library moved in after Hans Ratschow fled the GDR due to the political situation. In 1994, the Ratschow community of heirs renounced the building and donated it to the city, for which it was named "Haus Ratschow". Portraits of Ernst Ratschow (1937) and Clara Ratschow (1938), which were created by Egon Tschirch , hang in the staircase of the city library .

ELibrary

The Rostock City Library has been offering e-media for lending since July 1, 2013. Rostock City Library has been a member of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on-loan network since November 2015. In addition to eBooks, eAudios, ePapers, eMagazines and eVideos are also part of the offer.

swell

Heimann, Andrea: 100 years of Rostock City Library - from the public library to a modern service provider. Leipzig: University of Technology, Economics a. Culture Leipzig (FH) 1995
Wolff, Herbert: The public libraries in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania from their beginnings to 1918. Edited by the Schwerin district library. Ludwigslust: Volksdruckerei 1965
Wolff, Herbert: The public libraries in Mecklenburg from 1918 to 1954. Schwerin: Scientific general library of the Schwerin district in 1972

Meeting point library special edition 2/68. The Willi Bredel Library. Rostock City Library 1986

Keipke, Bodo: Rostock's most beautiful gable: "Haus Ratschow" in Kröpeliner Straße; Heirs made the home of the municipal library a gift to the municipality. In: Mecklenburg-Magazin: regional supplement of the Schweriner Volkszeitung and the North German Latest News. Schwerin: Landesverl. U. Druckges. 1994, 24, p. 13

Rostock (Rostock city district): Hop market 28th In: Fate of German monuments in the Second World War. Vol. 1: Berlin, capital of the GDR, districts Rostock, Schwerin, Neubrandenburg, Potsdam, Frankfurt / Oder, Cottbus, Magdeburg. Berlin: Henschelverlag 1978, p. 71

Web links

Further content in the sister projects of Wikipedia:
	Commons	- multimedia content
	Wikidata	- knowledge database

Individual evidence

^ Ordinance of the Ministry of Culture No. 1 v. June 17, 1954 on the improvement of scientific and methodological library work. In: Zentralblatt der DDR , No. 34, August 28, 1954.
^ Ernst Ratschow's life data according to the entry for his son Carl Heinz Ratschow ; Ratschow, Carl Heinz in der Deutschen Biographie , accessed on October 18, 2015.
↑ Cf. Ratschow, Carl Heinz in der Deutschen Biographie , accessed on October 18, 2015.

54.088631 12.136621Coordinates: 54 ° 5 ′ 19.1 ″ N , 12 ° 8 ′ 11.8 ″ E

[1] Ordinance of the Ministry of Culture No. 1 v. June 17, 1954 on the improvement of scientific and methodological library work. In: Zentralblatt der DDR , No. 34, August 28, 1954.

[2] Ernst Ratschow's life data according to the entry for his son Carl Heinz Ratschow ; Ratschow, Carl Heinz in der Deutschen Biographie , accessed on October 18, 2015.

[3] Cf. Ratschow, Carl Heinz in der Deutschen Biographie , accessed on October 18, 2015.