Weimar Military Library

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The Weimar Military Library is an important military library that has largely been preserved despite the World Wars and functions as the collection of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar . It was compiled over a period of 300 years (1630 to 1930). It was founded around 1785/86 by Duke Karl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach . After the extensive expansion of the collection by 1815, the holdings in the mid-19th century comprised around 6,000 books, 7,500 maps, 400 manuscripts , 25 globes and 11 models of fortresses . Prominent personalities from German history such as the national poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt frequented the library.

history

The House of Sachsen-Weimar (from 1741 Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach) maintained a close exchange with the Prussian Army . The Weimar dukes initially acted as regimental commanders of the cavalry , later they served as commanders in the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht . The outcome of the First Coalition War (1792–1797) between Prussia, Austria and small German states on the one hand and France on the other was important for the development of the population . Duke Karl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach promoted the military cartography in order to be able to defend the Thuringian demarcation line in the future. The surveyor Carl Friedrich von Wiebeking was commissioned and the Prussian lieutenant general and cartographer Friedrich Wilhelm Carl von Schmettau was persuaded to sell important map collections. The Duke subsequently acquired various maps , war maps , battle plans, etc., including around 2,500 topographical and thematic maps of Germany. World maps by the Spanish cartographer and explorer Diego Ribeiro from the 16th century were a special treasure .

Weimar became a center of cartography, in which the publisher Friedrich Justin Bertuch , for example, established himself. In addition, the introduction of scientific standards in officer training and numerous military journalistic publications during this period paved the way for the establishment of a Weimar military library. In 1786 a nominal catalog was drawn up, but it has not been preserved. The inventory includes older works from the Thirty Years War and others. a. from southern Germany. In 1798, due to the increase in the inventory, a revision and new cataloging took place under the direction of the Grand Ducal Ministers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Christian Gottlob von Voigt . At the turn of the century, the librarian Johann Christoph Ferdinand Spilcker created a real catalog . In 1804 the institutional separation from the public Duchess Anna Amalia Library took place. In 1805 Johann Christoph Gottlob Weise took over library services, later supported by Carl Ludwig Sckell .

Initially housed in the historical premises of the Amalia Library, the military library was moved to the Weimar residential palace after the restructuring at the latest in 1810 . In the course of the Battle of Jena and Auerstedt (1806) cards from the inventory were sent to the commanders General Ernst von Rüchel and General Friedrich Ludwig Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen , some of which had to be given to the French later due to the war. The library was used intensively to process the war defeat. The focus of the collection was on the areas of "history, science and criticism", and there was also access from the collections of Duke Friedrich August von Braunschweig-Lüneburg , the librarian Konrad Samuel Schurzfleisch and the linguist Christian Wilhelm Büttner . The library incorporated various bequests, collected diaries and reports, and acquired globes (including from the Johannes Schöners collection ).

In 1824, due to a lack of space, a library tower built by Carl Friedrich Christian Steiner at Ilmpark was moved into. From 1828 the library was primarily used for officers and for training units, but also for interested historians. In 1830 it was returned to the organizational area of ​​the public Amalia library. The original systematic acquisition was sacrificed to an unplanned collection policy in the city of Weimar Classicism , so only the Weimar military constitution and the naval armament of the 1870s were important until the five sub-collections were irrevocably separated from the middle of the 19th century . Only the books have been preserved together in the tower to this day, maps, globes etc. have been integrated into the Amalia library. The former traditional connections have largely been lost.

At the end of the 19th century, around 1,000 volumes of militaria were made available. In the First World War took place again procurement phase. Later, in the early 1930s, loans from regiments were recorded. In the time of National Socialism , popular and military libraries were more likely to be promoted, which was to the detriment of the scientific and historical military libraries. The GDR withheld the existence of the military library from the public because of reservations about the once aristocratic officer corps . In the 1970s and 1980s, the National Research and Memorial Centers half-heartedly began to recatalog this inventory, which was continued and completed after the fall of the Wall through retro-conversion of the card catalogs .

The accessibility of the military library through research is only partially possible to this day, since the books and maps have not yet been fully indexed and the manuscript list is only provisionally available. Various works from the inventory have been digitized.

Duration

The portion of the old military library in the Duchess Anna Amalia Library includes the following collections:

  • 5,200 of 20,000 volumes (25 to 30 percent)
  • 6,000 out of 10,000 cards (60 percent)
  • 25 out of 28 globes (90 percent)
  • 200 of 1,300 manuscripts (15 percent)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Digital military library