The history of the Berlin State Library closely parallels that of German history. It has lived through creation, neglect, expansion, war damage, division, unification and re-creation like few other libraries.
Library of kings In the early period, the fortunes of the State Library rose and fell on royal whims. In 1658
Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg decreed that his private books be organized, cataloged and made available to the public. His library opened in 1661 at
Cölln as the "Library of the Elector" (). In 1699,
Frederick I more than doubled the collection, extended opening hours and introduced the first Prussian
legal deposit law. In 1701 it was renamed the "Royal Library" () upon Frederick I's accession as first
King of Prussia.
Frederick William I then cancelled the acquisition budget in 1722 and gave away the valuable scientific collection to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1735.
Frederick the Great also cared little for the library at first, preferring instead his own literature in the French language. However, in 1770 he granted the library substantial assets and it made several important acquisitions. To avoid the problems caused by its dependence on the crown, Frederick the Great also granted the library considerable autonomy.
Rise to preeminence With new resources and authority, construction began on a Royal Library building on the
Bebelplatz in the center of Berlin. Built between 1775 and 1785 by
Georg Christian Unger to plans by
Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach, it was nicknamed the
Kommode (
Chest of drawers) after its
Baroque design. The collection then underwent nearly continuous improvement and expansion. By 1905 it had become the largest and most influential repository of materials in the German language, and at 1.2 million books one of the largest libraries in the world. The Bebelplatz building housed the library until 1914, when the headquarters moved into new, even larger premises on
Unter den Linden, designed by court architect
Ernst von Ihne. This was the height of the library's development before the
First World War. Today the old Royal building houses the Faculty of Law of
Humboldt University. At the founding of the
Weimar Republic the Royal Library was renamed the "Prussian State Library" (). After 1919, economic effects of war and inflation on the library were mitigated through the active support of the Emergency Association of German Sciences (after 1930, the
German Research Foundation).
War and destruction The
Nazi period severely damaged the institution through political intimidation, employee dismissals, restrictions on foreign acquisitions and the effects of
World War II. On 10 May 1933 a
book burning ceremony was held at the
Bebelplatz by members of the
Deutsche Studentenschaft, the
National Socialist German Students' League,
Sturmabteilung "brownshirts" and
Hitler Youth groups at the instigation of the Propaganda Minister,
Joseph Goebbels. The
Nazis burned over 20,000 books – mostly from the neighboring University, not the State library itself – including works by
Thomas Mann,
Erich Maria Remarque,
Heinrich Heine,
Karl Marx and many others. Today a glass plate set into the Bebelplatz, giving a view of empty bookcases, commemorates the event. After an
Allied bomb hit the
Unter den Linden building in 1941, the various holdings (consisting of some 3 million volumes and over 7,400
incunabula) were evacuated to 30 monasteries, castles, and abandoned mines around Germany. By the end of the war, the main building was severely damaged, the valuable collections were distributed across the
Allied zones of occupation, the library staff had scattered or been killed, and 700,000 volumes had been either
destroyed or lost. With the formal
dissolution of the State of Prussia in 1947, support for the library ended and the Prussian State Library ceased to exist.
Rebuilding and reunification After 1945, parts of the collection that had been hidden in what became the
Soviet occupation zone were returned to the war-damaged
Unter den Linden building in
East Berlin. It first opened in 1946 as the
Public Scientific Library (). When further restoration work was completed in 1955, the library was renamed the
German State Library (). The great domed reading room, however, remained a ruin in the center of the building. A larger proportion of the collection wound up in the American occupation zone, including a cache of 1.5 million volumes hidden in a
potash mine near
Hattorf, and was moved to the
University of Marburg in 1946. This collection first opened to the public as the
Hessian Library () and in 1949, as the last lost stores arrived, it was renamed the
West German Library (). Those parts of the collection that had been in the
French occupation zone, mainly at
Beuron Archabbey, were gathered to the
University of Tübingen. In 1962 the Federal Republic passed a law giving administrative responsibility for all these collections to
Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and endowed it with State funding. During the 1960s, the various stocks, services and personnel began to be relocated to
West Berlin. To house it all, a grand new building complex on the
Kulturforum was constructed near the
Berlin Wall, just away from the library in
East Berlin. After
German Reunification, the two institutions were formally reunited in 1992. The new West Berlin building and the original East Berlin building became "one library with two homes" and the old State Library was reborn as the
Berlin State Library. From 2000 until 2012 Berlin State Library was refurbished by German architect
HG Merz. The destroyed reading room, the core of the building, was replaced by a glass cube.
Legacies of the past Many important items from the original collection are now located in Poland and territories of the former Soviet Uniondeclared as
war reparations, sometimes controversiallysuch as the
Berlinka Art Collection. The original score of Beethoven's
8th Symphony is a starker example of division: while the first, second and fourth movements are in Berlin, the third is kept in
Kraków. Conversely, it is estimated that about 10,000 volumes and 9,000 other items in the Berlin State Library are there as a result of
Nazi plunder. As such, repatriation and self-criticism about these materials became controversial issues, so in 2005 the
Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation established the Center for Provenance Research to resolve the problems. For example, in 2008 a library user found an encyclopedia entitled
Religion in History and the Present Day with a bookplate indicating it once belonged to a Jewish theologian. Library staff managed to find his widow in Israel, but she wrote back: "I appreciate your offer to return this book to me, but I have no use for it now." ==Locations==