College and Research Libraries


Hy RENATA VON SCHELIHA 

Research Libraries in Germany 

Dr. Scheliha is catalogerJ Bryn Mawr 
College Library. 

GERMAN RESEARCH libraries are begin-ning to recover from the various blows 
they have had to endure since 1933. The 
first of these was not launched by allied 
bombs, but by the Nazi regime which-
soon after it came into power-ordered 
many valuable books to be cast into the 
flames either because their authors or their 
contents were not in accord with the new 
doctrine founded on nationalism and preju-
dice. At the same time the shelves of even 
the most scholarly libraries were filled with 
unscientific or pseudo-scientific books writ-
ten for the purposes of Nazi propaganda. 
Research libraries, as well as research itself, 
were enlisted to aid in the general prepara-
tions for the war. In 1937 "Book Week" 
was celebrated first in Weimar and then in 
Essen, "the foundr y of the German Reich,'~ 
so that, in the words of the speaker on this 
festive occasion, the national mind would 

· learn to connect the book with the sword. 1 

But when the war brought the air raids to 
German towns, the sword turned against 
the book. Since the very beginning of the 
war, books had been evacuated to places 
which seemed bomb-proof: salt and potash 
mines and forest lodges. But even so, the 
research libraries suffered tremendous losses. 
Many of the books which had remained in 
them were destroyed along with the library 
buildings. Others were lost or stolen dur-
ing removal, or r~ined by mice and mould. 
All in all, eight million books, or 57 per 

1 Hederich, Karl Heinz. Nationalsozialismus unci 
Buch. Mainz, Hanns Marxen, 1937· 

OCTOBERJ 1949 

cent of the prewar holdings, were destroyed 
in 31 libraries. Many of these were rare 
books or precious collections which can 
never be replaced. Some libraries lost all 
their catalogs, some saved only a few special 
ones, but even where the catalogs are at 
hand, they are useless to all intents and pur-
poses, since they no longer represent what is 
actually there. 2 

In the general chaos following the war, 
many libraries had to be closed for a time. 
But in spite of the lack of communication, 
the changes in the staff, and the difficult 
living conditions, the libraries soon began 
to reorganize. It will be several decades 
before the present holdings have been sup-
plemented and the catalogs-such as they 
are-revised. Nobody knows whether or 
not the German libraries will ever be as 
rich in book collections as they were before 
1933. But all the documents and reports 
relating to library work in Germany are 
eloquent of the amazing activity which the 
German libraries display in building up 
their collections again and bringing their 
<.:atalogs up-to-date. New policies have been 
developed for the purchase of old and new 
books, for interlibrary loan, for exchange 
agreements with foreign libraries, and for 
making records of old and new material. 
Many librarians hope to replace part of 
their lost material by microfilms. Perhaps 
they will experiment to determine to what 
extent books may really be replaced in this 
way, and for what kind of material the 
microfilming is most useful. 

2 'Leyh, Georg. Die de~ttschen .. ~ssenschaftlichen 
Bib liotheken nach dem Kneg . Tubmgen, J. C. B. 
Mohr, 1947. R eviewed and summarized h.Y Butler, 
Pierce. Library o~~arterly, 18:120-123, Apnl 1948. 

379 



A number of libraries are trying to make 
their material available as quickly as possi-
ble by dint of selective cataloging. The 
University Library of Hamburg, for in-
stance, fully catalogs only the most impor-
tant material, while the less important is 
cataloged only briefly, and the unimportant 
simply listed. In the Public Research Li-
brary of Berlin ( Oeffentliche Wissenschaft-
liche Bibliothek, the fo.rmer Preussische 
Staatsbibliothek), only a skeleton of the 
new acquisitions is cataloged for the public 
catalog, while a number of catalogs on 
special material-biographies, periodicals, 
newspapers, etc.-are slowly being built up. 

Some libraries resumed circulation as 
early as I945, and now almost all research 
libraries are open to readers, 3 some, of 
course, with certain restrictions, as they not 
only lack reading matter but also reading 
rooms. The University Library of Ham-
burg has even introduced the unknown prac-
.tice of immediate delivery of books. 

Scholarly library research has also begun 
again. D eutsche N ationalbibliographie~ 
D eutsche JJ;f usikbibliographie~ Bibliographie 
der K unstblatterJ 1 ahresverzeichnis des 
deutscen Schriftums~ and 1 ahresverzeichnis 
der deut'schen M uzikalia un M usikschriften 
-all these great bibliographical works 
which had been discontinued are again being 
published. The German library periodical, 
Zentralblatt fur BibliothekswesenJ which re-
appeared in I 94 7, stresses the task of again 
developing scholarly librarianship according 
to the old standards. It seems that the Ger-
man librarians are courageously and ener-
getically trying to reorganize the libraries 
and library work after the model of the pre-
war libraries. In the technical services, to 
be sure, improvements have been introduced 
and more will, perhaps, be made in the fu-
ture. On the whole, the prewar policies 

3 The list in Leyh's book is already obsolete. In 
1948 the Deutsche Buecherei in 'Leipzig and the 
Staatsb ibliothek in Munich were opened. See Leyh 
in the supplement to his book, Zentralblatt fur 
Bibliothekswesen, 62: r 57, January-Ap ril 1948. 

and tendencies are being resumed. Just 
as before the war they are concerned with 
the preservation of books and with making 
research material available to students and 
scholars, while the educational task of the 
library is all but forgotten. The only step 
in this direction seems to be the elimination 
of Nazi propaganda material. The outline 
for this task was given by the Allied Con-
trol Council, but the execution was handled 
differently in each zone. In the French 
zone the librarians alone were responsible 
for the elimination. In the Russian zone a 
long list has been worked out, so that the 
process of eliminating may be completed by 
clerical workers. In the American zone a 
shorter list was issued but soon withdrawn. 
There and in the British zone the librarians 
work together with the authorities of the 
military government. The amount of 
literature which had to be eliminated in this 
way may be seen from a report on the Saxon 
State Library ( Saechsische Landesbiblio-
thek) in Dresden. Fifteen thousand cards 
were removed from the subject ~atalog, I2I 
cards relating to 56 persons were removed 
from the biographical catalog, I 200 cards 
were taken from the serials catalog, and 
s6oo volumes of monographs, 2000 volumes 
of serials, and I400 volumes of newspapers 
were removed from the shelves. Some ma-
terial, such as newspapers and military 
books published before I 9 I 3, is preserved in 
two copies in the Deutsche Buecherei in 
Leipzig. In Hamburg and other libraries 
in the west zones the undesirable political 
and military material is marked and stored 
in a separate room. Those who wish to use 
it are admitted only by special permission. 
Even in medium-sized university libraries, 
7000 to IO,ooo volumes had to be elimi-
nated. Some libraries were closed for 
months in order to complete the time-con-
suming task of elimination. But this step 
toward political responsibility should not be 

. (Continued on page 394) 

380 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 



same work, but in Greek. I was free to 
examine page after page. It so happened 
that this was the last book in the last library 
that I visited in Persia. Here in this most 
fanatical and out-of-the-way city in the 
Middle East, I was more at home for the 
moment than I had been in the whole trip. 
Imagination carried me back to the Morgan 
Library and I saw again the pages of their 

Dioscorides. 
If in this account there has been more of 

books than of libraries, it is due in part, at 
least, to the fact that except for E gypt a 
library is looked upon mu~h less as an insti-
tution to disseminate information, than as 
an organization to collect and catalog books. 
These are to be used , yes, but above all to 
be preserved. 

Research Libraries in Germany 
(Continued from page ]So) 

the last. Besides those books which prove 
to have been instruments of Nazi propa-
ganda, there are many, by apparently non-
political authors which, when carefully ex-
amined, show the infiltration of Hitler's 
tenets. One of the most effective methods of 
the Nazi party was to camouflage propa-
ganda in this way, and many authors either 
consciously or unconsciously helped in this 
campaign. 4 It is impossible to destroy all 
these books, but they present a problem and 
even a danger as long as great parts of the 
German population still incline to national-
ism and antisemitism. In the postwar publi-
cations of German librarians these problems 
have not been touched any more than other 
educational and political problems. This 
apparent oversight has its source in the tradi-
tion of German librarianship and the train-
ing of librarians. The fields covered in the 
United States by the duties of the "readers' 
adviser" are almost unknown in Germany. 

4 Lehmann-Haupt , Hellmut. "What the Nazi s Did 
to Childr en' s Book s." The H orn B oo k Magazine, 
2 5 :220-2 3 0, MaycJune 1949 . 

Book selection and annotation, display of 
instructive and valuable books, and personal 
advice to readers are not to be found in 

. the research libraries. This is all the more 
unfortunate since, in Germany, research li-
braries also fulfil the functions of public li-
braries. The so-called "volksbuechereien" 
are not the equivalent of public libraries 
and have only small book collections 
selected for uneducated readers. The gap 
between the professional librarian working 
in research libraries and the librarian 
of "volksbuechereien" who, indeed, per-
formed some educational work, was al-
ways great and does J?Ot seem to have di-
minished. The professional librarian did 
not take into consideration that he too had 
educational tasks and that the adult reader 
needed his guidance. The reorganization 
of the libraries, so well performed in many 
respects , has not balanced this lack in Ger-
man librarianship-a .lack which may per-
haps prove more disastrous ·for German cul-
ture than the loss of books. 

394 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES