Library movement

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The Bücherhalle movement (also public library movement) was a social movement in Germany in the 1890s, the reform of public libraries , called the National Education to promote. The public libraries in the United States and Great Britain were the model for the library movement in Germany .

history

The existing German public libraries were completely inadequate in many ways. Their holdings were out of date, the opening times were short, they were often only looked after on a voluntary basis and with limited resources. These could no longer be reconciled with the new educational ideas. The libraries should not only address the lower classes and bring about an improvement in the social situation through education. "Educational libraries" should be created for all classes. Because public libraries are necessary for the people, even more necessary for the educated.

The social pedagogy , which was also emerging at this time and which dealt with the consequences of industrialization and the resulting social changes , brought new educational tendencies . As early as 1886, Eduard Reyer reported on the American libraries and thus initiated a discussion about the German public libraries. A reform of these libraries seemed inevitable in order to do justice to popular education. But the discussion only really got going after Constantin Nörrenberg had traveled to the USA in 1893 and got to know the public libraries there as well. In the following years he devoted himself to spreading this type of library in Germany. A characteristic of the public libraries was that they often made well-equipped reading rooms available to their users, a clear difference to the pure lending library that had been widespread in Germany up until then. In addition, the public libraries were accessible to everyone and had very generous opening times. Nörrenberg saw the newly designed bookhouses based on the Anglo-Saxon model as a useful addition to the public schools. He coined the designation book or reading hall in order to distinguish himself from the public libraries that had existed up until then. So in 1894 the first "Free Library and Reading Room" was created under the sponsorship of the Society for Ethical Culture in Frankfurt.

In 1895 Nörrenberg gave a much-noticed lecture on the subject of "The People's Library, Its Tasks and Reforms" to the Society for the Dissemination of Popular Education and thus became a driving force behind the library movement. The ideas and templates from Reyer and Nörrenberg were also adopted by the Comenius Society . In 1899 it sent a circular to all cities and municipalities with more than 10,000 inhabitants. With the appeal “Create bookhalls!”, Reference was again made to the Anglo-Saxon models. There the public libraries were already publicly sponsored and so the reformed public libraries and newly created bookhalls were to be financed with community funds. The arguments cited as to why this was in the interests of a community were the lowering of the cost of poor relief and the fight against crime and alcoholism. As early as 1898, the first municipal library was founded, the Charlottenburg Municipal Public Library and Reading Hall .

Charlottenburg was the first book hall to pursue the conceptual idea of ​​a standardized library . This was followed by a summary of the existing academic and public libraries. The bookhalls should also be freely usable, have sufficient opening times, be managed by trained, full-time librarians and be equipped with a reading room . The holdings should not only serve "instruction", but also hold " beautiful literature ". Here, too, reference was made to the public libraries, which even then had novels in their holdings and which lent them to their users. In this context, Nörrenberg formulates: "The big task is not: the same education for everyone, but: everyone the education that suits them, that they need in their position, that they can master". In its appeal, the Comenius Society demanded a selection of books calculated for all circles of the people, central administration, and a location of the spatially adequate library at a favorable location in the city. The clearly defined target group of the bookhouses is therefore all layers and not just the lower layers previously served by the public library.

One of the most successful bookhalls in Germany was the Bremen Reading Hall , which opened in 1902 and was managed by founding director Dr. Arthur Heidenhain developed into one of the most modern public libraries in Germany. Arthur Heidenhain stood for a technical professionalization of the tasks, the staff and especially the critical book selection "as a counterweight to the economically oriented book market", and had already worked out the first systematic inventory of a public library as head of the book hall in Jena .

Today the time of the book hall movement from 1895 to 1912 is also called the "older" one. Because the desired overall success of the movement did not materialize, many new impulses were set, but the newly created bookhouses also got bogged down in discussions about the current situation and became part of political disputes. After this, the so-called "direction dispute" arose in the library system, in which the liberal book hall was opposed to the educational public library of the New Direction . Part of the success of the Bücherhalle movement is likely to be one's own library branch with the associated profession creating, the People's Librarian .

Important persons

Important sponsoring companies

Timeline of the first foundings

  • 1893 with the still old name the "General People's Library", Freiburg (combined book and reading hall)
  • 1894 “Free Library and Reading Room”, Frankfurt
  • 1895 “Public Reading Room”, Berlin
  • 1896 “Public Reading Room”, Jena
  • 1898 “Municipal Public Library and Reading Room”, Charlottenburg
  • 1899 " Krupp'sche Bücherhalle ", Essen
  • 1899 "Heimann'sche Public Library and Reading Room", Berlin
  • 1899 “ Public Bookhalls ”, Hamburg
  • 1902 " Reading Hall Bremen "

literature

  • Christel Rubach: The Volksbücherei as an educational library in the theory of the German library movement. Working at the librarian training institute of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Greven Verlag, Cologne 1962.
  • Wolfgang Mühle: On the older library movement as the beginning of the German public library in the age of imperialism. Edited by the Central Institute for Libraries, Berlin. Volksdruckerei Aschersleben, Aschersleben 1968.
  • Wolfgang Thauer: The library movement. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 1970, ISBN 978-3447012850 .
  • Wolfgang Thauer: History of the public library in Germany. Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden 1990, ISBN 978-3447029742 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nörrenberg, Constantin: The public library, its tasks and reforms. Kiel 1896. Stettin 1928. pp. 11-12.
  2. ↑ Nörrenberg, Constantin: The book and reading hall, an educational institution of the future. Cologne 1896. pp. 3-9.
  3. ^ Comenius sheets for public education, Volume 7/1899. Pp. 67-71.
  4. ↑ Erwin Miedtke: For a culture of reading and learning. From the “Reading Hall Association” to the “Friends of the Bremen City Library e. V. " . In: With a little help from my friends: circles of friends and support associations for libraries; a manual. Bad Honnef: Bock + Herchen, 2005
  5. ↑ http://www.ib.hu-berlin.de/buchidee/buch4/content/Miedtke10.pdf
  6. ↑ Christoph Köster: The whole world of the media - a century of Bremen city library. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2002, ISBN 3-86108-673-5 .