Leuven University Library

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The destroyed library in the First World War

The University Library of Leuven is the university library of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Leuven ( Belgium ). It was both during the first and during the Second World War, each constructed again destroyed and afterwards.

history

From the foundation of the university in 1425 until 1636 there was no central library. Only in 1636 was such a facility set up in the former cloth hall .

During the First World War , the library fell into flames on the night of August 25th to 26th, 1914 , when German troops burned down about a sixth of all buildings in the city of Leuven, which they occupied on August 19th. The trigger for this destruction was that shots rang out in the city; these have been attributed to irregular snipers . About 1,000 manuscripts, 800 incunabula and 300,000 books were burned. This event subsequently played a major role in the war propaganda of the Entente against the Central Powers . Germany was accused of not leaving even irretrievable cultural assets intact ("Ici finit la culture allemande").

The university library today

The university library was rebuilt after the First World War 1921–1928 according to plans by the American architect Whitney Warren (1864–1943) in the style of the Flemish Renaissance and with a characteristic bell tower with American financial support - Herbert Hoover had a special role in this. The library opened on July 4th, 1928, on Independence Day .

During the Second World War , the library burned down again on May 16, 1940 - this time the retreating British and the advancing Wehrmacht troops accused each other. 900,000 books burned. After the Second World War, the library was reconstructed true to the original and placed under monument protection in 1987.

The division of the University of Leuven from 1968 to 1970 into a Flemish and a French-speaking part and the associated relocation of the latter to Louvain-la-Neuve also affected the university library. The division of the book inventory was largely based on mutual agreement; for the controversial part it was finally carried out - following an idea initially intended as a joke - according to even and odd signatures .

Carillon

In the tower of the university library hangs a carillon , the bells of which were originally cast in 1928 by the British company Gillett & Johnston ( Croydon ). Today only the largest can be heard from the tower; the treble bells were replaced by Dutch bells in the 1980s. The sequence of tones ranging from fis 0 -GIS 0 -b 0 chromatic to b 5 .

literature

  • Matthew Battles: The World of Books. A history of the library, Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2003. ISBN 3-538-07165-9 . Pp. 179-188.
  • Chris Coppens, Mark Derez, Jan Roegers: Leuven University Library 1425-2000 , Leuven 2000. ISBN 90-5867-466-5
  • John N. Horne, Alan Kramer: German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial , Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. 2001. ISBN 0-300-08975-9
  • Wolfgang Schivelbusch : The library of lions. An episode from the time of the world wars . Hanser, Munich 1988. ISBN 3-446-15162-1

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Furore Teutonico , Der Spiegel 12/1988.
  2. ↑ Matthew Battles: The World of Books: A History of the Library . Artemis and Winkler, Düsseldorf 2003, ISBN 3-538-07165-9 , pp. 182-185 .
  3. ↑ Matthew Battles: The World of Books: A History of the Library . Artemis and Winkler, Düsseldorf 2003, ISBN 3-538-07165-9 , pp. 185-188 .
  4. ↑ G. Ringlet (Ed.): Une aventure universitaire , Éditions Racine, Brussels 2000, p. 22.
  5. ↑ see also article in the English Wikipedia

See also

Web links

Commons : Katholieke Universiteit Leuven  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 52 ′ 40.9 "  N , 4 ° 42 ′ 26.5"  E