AP - Archives, Libraries, and Museums

2011

AP - Archives, Libraries, and Museums

Fach-Englisch für Archivare: mit Vokabelliste, Formulierungshilfen und Schaubildern [Specialized English for Archivists: With Vocabulary List, Aids for Formulation, and Diagrams]. Keith R. Allen and Dirk Ullmann. Berlin: BibSpider, 2011. 160 p. ill. 21 cm + 1 CD-ROM. ISBN 978-3-936960-42-6: EUR 32 [11-4]

This is a useful handbook for archivists. The vocabulary list, which comprises the main part of the volume (p. 13-87), contains about 2,200 terms from archival work and the auxiliary fields of history with their English equivalents. The appendix consists of aids for formulating telephone calls, correspondence, and archive tours; frequently asked questions and their English equivalents; a list of “false friends”; the English names for punctuation marks and symbols; a list of English abbreviations and acronyms; a brief bibliography of 11 titles; and useful internet addresses. Missing from the bibliography is the Glossary of Basic Archival and Library Conservation Terms (München, 1988). The usefulness of the diagrams (p. 137-143) is not immediately apparent. The authors are an archivist from the USA and one from Germany. The CD-ROM contains only the vocabulary list, but the search function in the Acrobat reader allows a search for the German term distinct from the English one. [jli,sh/gph]

Geschichte des Geheimen Staatsarchivs vom 15. bis 18. Jahrhundert [History of the Secret State Archive from the 15th to the 18th Century]. Melle Klinkenborg. Ed. Jürgen Kloosterhuis. Berlin: Selbstverlag des Geheimen Staatsarchivs PK, 2011. xxvii, 222 p. ill. 22 cm. (Veröffentlichungen aus den Archiven Preußischer Kulturbesitz: Arbeitsberichte, 13). ISBN 978-3-923579-15-0: EUR 18 [12-3]

The farther back an archive can trace its origins, the greater must be the temptation for staff, in addition to collecting, preserving and cataloging its acquisitions, to chronicle its institutional history. Not many archives can look back as far as the 13th century, so when Melle Klinkenborg—who began in 1898 as an assistant at what was then known as the Preußiches Geheimes Staatsarchiv [Prussian Secret State Archive] and eventually became director—surrendered to this temptation, he already had several manuscripts penned by his predecessors to work from. His Die Begründung des Markgräflich Brandenburgischen Archivs im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert [The Founding of the Margrave of Brandenburg Archive in the 15th Century] was published in 1911, but a manuscript about the Archive in the 17th and 18th centuries was left unpublished upon his untimely death in 1930. Both these texts are reproduced in this volume, albeit with the appendices of the former replaced by a collection of handwriting samples of the archive’s staff together with brief biographical data up to about 1800.

The foreword by editor Kloosterhuis describes how 20 typescripts of parts of Klinkenborg’s manuscript were used internally by staff members, who annotated and updated them by hand. Of these, seven survived, and Kloosterhuis gives the annotations found on them as editor’s notes in the text. A section of the manuscript describing the old repositories of the Archive also formed the basis for the publication in 1934 of Übersicht über die Bestände des Geheimen Staatsarchivs zu Berlin-Dahlem [Survey of the Collections of the Secret State Archive in Berlin-Dahlem]. Two more sections, on the organization and inventory of the Archive, were previously planned for publication and the foreword Reinhard Lüdicke prepared at that time is also included here. While the readability of the by now well over 80-year old texts bespeaks their author’s mastery and love of his subject, the material is sufficiently dense that the layperson may find it difficult to maintain the big picture. Indeed, a thorough familiarity with the historical-political background of the era is necessary fully to grasp which events had what consequences for the Archive. Nonetheless, for a limited audience, because of its insights into the technical structure of the Archive as well as its evaluation of materials that have since been lost due to war, this work will remain central to the history of the Geheimes Staatsarchiv. [sts/kst]

Bibliothek und Forschung: die Bedeutung von Sammlungen für die Wissenschaft [The Scholarly Librarian: Festschrift for Werner Arnold]. Ed. Detlev Hellfaier. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz in Kommission, 2009. xxv, 517 p. ill. 25 cm. (Wolfenbütteler Schriften zur Geschichte des Buchwesens, 44). ISBN 978-3-447-06100-1: EUR 98

This anthology is a festschrift in honor of the 40th anniversary of the acquisition and consolidation of the provincial [Land] and city libraries of Düsseldorf into the Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek [ULB] Düsseldorf.

The anthology is organized thematically into three sections. Articles in the first explore specific, discrete collections within the ULB Düsseldorf. Some highlights include an article by Barbara Engemann-Reinhardt who discusses the work of Polish-Jewish pediatrician, educator, and writer Janusz Korczak (who died in the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942) and the collection bequeathed by his estate to the ULB, consisting of books, gray literature, and realia. Gertrude Cepl-Kaufmann, emeritus professor in German at the University of Düsseldorf, takes a look at the playbill and its history and relevance within the field cultural research. Librarians Dietmar Haubfleisch and Christian Ritzi devote themselves to an in-depth, if cumbersome, analysis of unexplored writings, “School Programs—History and Importance in the Historiography of the Educational System.” They describe the history and evolution of these public documents and demonstrate their value as a source for historical and educational research. At the same time they criticize their own profession, which previously assigned no value whatsoever to such collections and disposed of important documents rather than indexing, storing, and preserving them.

In the second section, articles emphasize preservation and restoration of collections. In one article, ULB colleagues Gabrielle Dreis and Ulrich Schlüter, discuss the library’s digitization processes and protocols of their collection of medieval manuscripts. For example, the authors point out how digitization projects are an important intervention for the preservation of original documents, such as those suffering corrosion from iron gall ink. Articles in the third section explore research and scholarly projects created using the special collections. One article, written by Stefan Schweizer, an art historian specializing in landscape design, discusses a research project and exhibition produced by his class. He and his students not only curated an exhibit entitled “Gardens As They Appear in Books,” which included major works of horticultural literature from the ULB collections, but demonstrated that gardening is a much older tradition than what is reflected in the contemporary discourse of landscape architecture. His shorter, theoretical article, “The Literature of Landscape Architecture from the Holdings of the University and Regional Library Düsseldorf—an Exhibit and its Research Relevance” illustrates the successful public-public partnership of libraries and research communities. Art historian Nadine Müller wrote her dissertation on the self-promotion of artists from the Düsseldorf School. Her article, “Works of the Book Illustration Community as a Mechanism of Cooperation of the Düsseldorf School,” fits because of its local historical orientation and because the ULB functions in a regional capacity.

An index of names, author index, and image credits for the more than eighty contributions to this anthology, as well as a multi-page “Bibliography of the Holdings of the ULB Düsseldorf ” illustrate the research and scholarly importance of these collections and the librarians’ knowledge of them. [jba/jmw]

Lesewelten—Historische Bibliotheken: Büchersammlungen des 18. Jahrhunderts in Museen und Bibliotheken in Sachsen-Anhalt [Reading Worlds—Historical Libraries: 18th-Century Book Collections in Museums and Libraries in Saxony- Anhalt]. Ed. Katrin Dziekan and Ute Pott. Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2011. 428 p. ill. music, 29 cm. (Sachsen-Anhalt und das 18. Jahrhundert, 3). ISBN 978-3-89812-538-3: EUR 24 [12-4]

This reasonably priced volume offers both magnificent illustrations and knowledgeable, well-written contributions about remarkable book collections in Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany, covering various aspects of its library and book history in the 18th century. An introductory essay by Lars-Thade Ulrich, „Wenn Kopf und Buch zusammentreffen...“ [When Mind and Book Meet...] is followed by six chapters with a total of 30 articles mainly concerning individual libraries, but also collectors, illustrators, and some splendid manuscripts. The geography of the area’s library landscape is depicted by a map on an initial flyleaf. Indexes of persons and of place names bring the work to a close.

100. Deutscher Bibliothekartag: Festschrift [The 100th German Librarian Conference: Festschrift]. Ed. Felicitas Hundhausen, Daniela Lülfing, and Wilfried Sühl-Strohmenger. Hildesheim: Olms, 2011. 258 p. ill. 25 cm. ISBN 978-3-487-14509-9: EUR 39.80 [11-3]

In the year 2000 the Verein Deutscher Bibliothekare (VDB) [German Librarians’ Association] celebrated its 100th anniversary with the publication of a festschrift and later a corresponding bibliography: Verein Deutscher Bibliothekare 1900-2000: Festschrift (Wiesbaden, 2000), and Verein Deutscher Bibliothekare 1900-2000: Bibliographie und Dokumentation (Wiesbaden, 2004). In contrast, the German Librarian Conference only celebrated its 100th meeting in Berlin in 2011, as its conferences did not take place during both world wars. In commemoration of that anniversary, this festschrift was published. It combines historical and current perspectives as well as practical and theoretical aspects of the meetings.

Four of the 13 contributions discuss the relevance and necessity of these conferences. The conference as a means of providing continuing education and professional development to practicing librarians is discussed in the first contribution. Subsequent contributions provide suggestions for organizing future conferences, and outline results from recent surveys of conference participants. Other contributions examine past and present vendor exhibits and emphasize the importance of the conference as a venue for intensive dialog between libraries and library vendors.

The majority of the contributions provided various historical perspectives on conference meetings and librarianship in Germany. A 20-volume collection of gray literature and ephemera from conference meetings held between 1900 and 1939 is the focus of one contribution. Although the Association and the Conference meetings during the Nazi regime have been well documented, Jan-Pieter Barbian’s contribution in this volume also covers public librarian conferences. Topics such as concealing or destroying undesired literature, branding Jewish authors in catalogs, and discriminating against Jewish patrons were increasingly discussed at library conferences during this time. Other contributions examine meetings during the early postwar years, and also the conference in 1968, where early forerunners of electronic data processing were a focus of discussion. Konrad Marwinski writes of the challenges to Cold War era professional relations between librarians in both halves of divided Germany. Already by 1955 members of the Bibliotheksverband der DDR (GDR Library Association) were forbidden from being members of the VDB. Nevertheless, inner-German contacts continued outside the yearly conference, as is also documented in the book West-östliche Bande (see RREA 17:29), in which Marwinski has contributed a chapter about the two professional associations.

Although it is impossible to cover all 100 meetings of the Deutscher Bibliothekartag exhaustively in one volume, this festschrift does nevertheless provide worthwhile facets of present and historical German librarianship. It complements the aforementioned 2000 and 2004 publications covering the Association. The volume would have benefited from an index and biographical information on the authors. [mk/bwv]

Roggenburg, Amorbach, Ochsenhausen: Austattungsprogramme von Klosterbibliotheken im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert in Süddeutschland [Roggenburg, Amorbach, Ochsenhsausen: Furnishing Monastic Libraries toward the End of the 18th Century in Southern Germany]. Hans Heinrich Seifert. Weinstadt: Greiner, 2011. 450 p. ill. 25 cm. ISBN 978-3-86705-052-4: EUR 24.80 [12-2]

Ornate libraries from past centuries continue to charm and delight and be the subject of scholarly papers and exhibitions. This work under review, the author’s 2009 dissertation at the University of Freiburg, is no exception. The author has thoroughly researched the architectural concept of the Baroque monastic library, with special attention being paid to the spirit of the Enlightenment as well to as this type of library’s precarious situation at the end of the 18th century.

Sketches and drafts for the frescoes were supervised by monks, librarians, and archivists, who were well versed in theology and history, the so-called concetti [lit., ideas-people], but the materials have not survived. The ceiling frescos were painted between 1781 and 1790. Roggenburg is a Premonstratensian Monastery (an order founded in 1110 by St. Norbert at Prémontré, France); Ochsenhausen and Amorbach are Benedictine. Roggenburg and Ochsenhausen lie not far to the south of Ulm; Amorbach is near Miltenberg on the Main River. Roggenburg and Amorbach were decorated by the fresco-painter Konrad Huber (1752-1830) of Weißenhorn, and Ochsenburg was decorated by the painter Johann Joseph Anton Huber (1737-1815) of Augsburg.

Seifert’s work is mainly a bibliographic treatise and not a history of the art or architecture of monastic libraries. He follows an identical, tightly constructed outline for all three libraries: Section 1 is an extensive documentation of the literature and sources, the history of each monastery and its library’s furnishings, biographies of the personages involved in the construction, and a description of the library’s design and furnishing. Section 2 is a treatment of the history of library design and furnishings for this period, and Section 3 is a treatise on the history of the ideas behind the decoration of these libraries, including theology, science, and the Enlightenment, particularly the Catholic Enlightenment.

The final section consists of primary source documents, unpublished sources for the three libraries, a bibliography, and indexes of abbreviations and illustrations. There is no comprehensive index.

Bibliotheken und Informationsgesellschaft in Deutschland: eine Einführung [Libraries and the Information Society in Germany: An Introduction]. Engelbert Plassmann et al. 2d, rev. and expanded ed. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011. x, 388 p. ill. maps. 24 cm. ISBN 978-3-447-06474-3: EUR 34.80 [11-4]

Engelbert Plassmann and his colleagues Hermann Rösch, Jürgen Seefeldt, and Konrad Umlauf have produced a much-needed, thorough revision of their 2006 work (see IFB 07-2-292). This paperback-only edition contains a larger and more user-friendly font and is a bit cheaper than the first edition, making it much more affordable for students. The structure of the work has not changed, but a number of new critical sub-areas have been added. For example Chapter 4, Netze und Kooperationen, Innovationen und Projekte, has additional material on library policy, cooperation in the fields of mass digitization, and open access. Chapter 5, Normen, Standards, Richtlinien und Empfehlungen) [Norms, Standards, Directions, and Recommendations] has an added section on professional ethics. Even some of the section headings had to be altered due to the addition of new valuable content. For example section 5.3.8 no longer covers just Dublin Core, but also addresses new standards such as Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and CIDOC CRM (The International Committee for Documentation, Conceptual Reference Model). There are also new entries for terms such as Creative Commons, DigiZeitschriften, e-Science, Europeana, Google Books, Max Planck Digital Library, Semantic Web, SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), and Social Software. All these developments, depicted topically in this work, show how dynamic the German Library system is becoming. This text even includes some of the published recommendations of the Wissenschaftsrat [Science Council] and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft from as recently as February 2011. The author, Engelbert Plassmann, wanted a concise and manageable work, so that any reader would notice areas where more up-to-date points could have been added. But he chose to limit these areas in the effort to cover a lot of territory in the expanding field of German librarianship. This second edition is a strongly recommended overview of German librarianship. [hdw/sas]

Bibliotheken und Sammlungen im Exil [Libraries and Collections in Exile]. Ed. Claus-Dieter Krohn and Lutz Winkler for the Gesellschaft für Exilforschung/ Society for Exile Studies. München: Text Edition + Kritik, 2011. 262 p. ill. 23 cm. (Exilforschung, 29). ISBN 978-3-86916-143-3: EUR 32 [11-4]

Private libraries and collections provide a highly informative insight into the interests and passions of their owners and reflect the social prestige and aspirations of the educated middle class. The underlinings, marginal notations, addenda, and inscribed dedications to individuals and institutions tell the stories of their owners’ active engagement with the texts, and the rise, social standing and affiliations, and world-views of the educated middle class. The Nazi regime permanently destroyed essential elements of the bourgeois book culture of the day. The long period of collective forgetting in West Germany, and the selective and rigid anti-fascist concept of history in East Germany, put off much meaningful research on this topic until the recent past. The current growth of exile studies has brought more focus to those book collections and to their owners who survived Nazi oppression and destruction.

This work is a collection of 15 papers from a March 2011 conference of the Gesellschaft für Exilforschung [Society for Exile Studies] and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv [German Literature Archive] in Marbach. The contributors discuss rescued collections, those destroyed by the Nazis, and the fate of some collections now housed in exile.

The book begins with Günter Häntzschel’s discussion of the fundamental questions and issues related to these irretrievable intellectual losses, even if part or all of a collection is recovered. Among other essays, Manuela Günther discusses the autobiographical novel Die verlorene Bibliothek [The Lost Library] by the poet and novelist Walter Mehring, first published in New York in 1951, characterizing it as a pathography of destruction and a critical evaluation of failure. Using the example of Count Harry Kessler’s library, Thomas Richter explores the possibilities and limitations of reconstructing such a collection. Kessler compiled his library over several decades, but it was widely dispersed after he went into exile in 1933. More than 1,000 titles of Kessler’s collection have been identified, about half of which reside in the Dutchess Anna-Amalia Library in Weimar.

Julia Scialpi discusses the long legal bagttle over the library of writer Alfred Mombert, which the Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe acquired in 1950 and which still today remains a closed collection. Yvonne Domhardt’s essay describes Hannah Arendt’s role as a broker in getting parts of the library of the Rabbinical Seminary in Breslau transferred to Switzerland. Michaela Scheibe gives an interim report on the status of Nazi-looted books in the Prussian State Library in Berlin; so far some 1,500 stolen books have been identified, of which about 870 have restituted. Two papers discuss the fate of Austrian book collectors and their stolen libraries (see also NS-Provenienzforschung an österreichischen Bibliotheken—RREA 17:32). And the work concludes with Marje Schuetze-Coburn’s history of first the loss and then the recovery of Lion Feuchtwanger’s library, now held at the University of Southern California.

While it is eminently feasible and desireable to recreate digitally these and other exiled libraries, the authors in this volume remind us of the need to preserve the materiality, aesthetics, and tactile meaning of books as documents of human existence. These émigré libraries are evidence of the shock of a hasty flight before the threat of concentration camp and death, a testament to the act of looting and destruction of cultural treasure, and a place of remembrance of and witness to the Nazi hegemony of power. Above all, these collections are a tribute to the organic relationship between books and the human intellect (see for example Wie würde ich ohne Bücher leben?—RREA 15/16:38) and an expression of what Wolf Bierman called the “Bitter Word—Exile.” [sk/sas]

Digitale Edition und Forschungsbibliothek: Beiträge der Fachtagung im Philosophicum der Universität Mainz am 13. und 14. Januar 2011 [The Digital Edition and The Research Library: Proceedings of the Conference …]. Ed. Christiane Fritze. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011. 181 p. ill. 24 cm. (Bibliothek und Wissenschaft, 44). ISBN 978-3-447-06568-9: EUR 99 [12-1]

The focus of this January 2011 conference held in the Philosophicum of Mainz University was on “media convergence”. Key participants included members of the Zentrum für digitale Edition der Universität Würzburg [Center for Digital Edition, Würzburg University], the Institut für Dokumentologie und Editorik (IDE), and the journal Bibliothek und Wissenschaft [The Library and Scholarship]. Eleven addresses, including two in English, focused on three thematic streams: (1) the digital edition and the library, (2) users and the utilization of digital editions, and (3) opportunities and challenges for libraries in the digital age. Lacking was a convincing vision of how the library of the future should be “built” to meet the need for guaranteed ongoing access to all of the content represented in analog editions. Das Ende der Bibliothek? (see RREA 17:24) presents an alternative perspective. [jba/rlk]

Das Ende der Bibliothek? Vom Wert des Analogen [The End of the Library? On the Value of the Analog]. Ed. Uwe Jochum and Armin Schlechter. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2011. 133 p. ill. 25 cm. (Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie. Sonderbände, 46). ISBN 978-3-465-03722-4: EUR 39.60 (series subscription price) [11-4]

On 22-23 April 2010 a conference was held at the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha [Research Library of Gotha, Germany] under the leadership of the editors of this volume. The locus of concern was: What are the implications for books, libraries, culture, and historiography of the propagation of digitally generated networks, which call into question the future viability of the book and replace analog content with virtual volatility? Ten speakers address the issues from perspectives that go beyond the bibliographic. In the view of Uwe Jochum, the paradigm change that began in the 1960s with the American reaction to the “Sputnik shock” and has now culminated in Google, represents the “beginning of the self-liquidation of libraries.” The importance of this conference is not limited to a few librarians (see also the proceedings of the conference Digitale Edition und Forschungsbibliothek—RREA 17:23). Indeed, it speaks to the place of the humanities, whose discursive orientation to the world as memory, legacy, and future is threatened to be lost in the encounter with a world calculated in binary terms. [jba/rlk]

Ex Bibliotheca Bunaviana: Studien zu den institutionellen Bedingungen einer adligen Privatbibliothek im Zeitalter der Aufklärung [Ex Bibliotheka Bunaviana: Studies of the Organizational Requirements of an Aristocrat’s Private Library in the Age of Enlightenment]. Torsten Sander. Dresden: Thelem, 2011. 388 p. ill. 23 cm. (Aufklärungsforschung, 6). ISBN 089-3-939888-99-4: EUR 49.80 [12-1]

In its time, Heinrich von Bünau’s library was one of the leading libraries of Germany, remarkable for its large collection of 40,000 volumes, for the capable librarians who managed it (among them J. J. Winckelmann), and for the detailed catalog of the collection, the Catalogus Bibliothecae Bunavianae, compiled by Johann Michael Francke. Unlike most other private libraries of its time, it was not merely for show and leisure reading, but it was a research library whose collection was deliberately developed and shaped by the Saxon count Heinrich von Bünau (1697-1762), a man of broad intellectual interests, a student of law, a politician, and a passionate book collector. Torsten Sander, himself a librarian, has written an in-depth study of this library, using it as an example of a private library of an enlightened aristocrat of the 18th century.

The library was sold by Bünau’s heirs in 1764 to the Electoral Saxon Library in Dresden. Today its volumes are among the treasures of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staatsund Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB). Despite its displacement, the collection has retained its unity because of its printed catalog and the uniform bindings used for all of its volumes. The library’s special status was recognized even by Bünau’s contemporaries. Several studies have been written about the library already. However, Sander’s scholarship goes farther, by describing the collection in terms of its relationship to its biographical, political, and historical context. In doing so, his work contributes to an understanding of the role the 18th-century library played in the history of libraries. Sander poses two questions as the starting point for his study: (1) Can Bünau’s private library be regarded as a representative “library of the Enlightenment?” and (2) To what extent can one see a confrontation of the traditional and modern in the content and creation of the Bünau library? In Sander’s discussion of the Catalogus as a universal index, he views the history of the library as a history of scholarship. Lastly, he analyzes the relationship between the public and the 18th-century library. Bünau made his collection accessible to scholars for their research, either in person or through correspondence, and the librarians he employed provided assistance to those seeking information. The subject matter of his library reflects his life and class as a nobleman who served in various political functions, was engaged in education and pedagogy, and was interested in the theological issues and scientific discoveries of his day.

Sanders’ study elucidates the role played by the library in the literary development of the Enlightenment. This work is of interest not only to those interested in the history of libraries but to cultural historians of the 18th century. [rr/akb]

Leipziger, Eure Bücher! Zwölf Kapitel zur Bestandsgeschichte der Leipziger Stadtbibliothek. Ausstellung in der Bibliotheca Albertina 18. Juni bis 28. November 2009 [Citizens of Leipzig, Your Books! Twelve Chapters in the History of the Leipzig Municipal Library. Exhibit in the Albertina Library, June 18 to November 28, 2009]. Ed. Thomas Fuchs and Christoph Mackert for the Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig. Leipzig: Universitäts-Verlag, 2009. 209 p. ill. 23 cm. (Schriften aus der Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, 16). ISBN 978-3- 86583-375-4 (Universitäts-Verlag); ISBN 978-3-910108-89-9 (UB Leipzig): EUR 19.80 [10-2]

Subsequent to the invention of printing, in the early modern period many books found their way not only into monasteries and courts of the nobility, but also into cities, mainly into the private libraries of scholars rather than into university or municipal libraries. Beginning in the 18th century, however, city libraries began to take on important cultural functions. That was the case for the Leipzig Municipal Library, whose history is the focus of this informative exhibit catalog.

The volume consists of two parts. The first contains four essays addressing various epochs in the library’s history: An early donation of 42 manuscript volumes of juridica (27 of which are still extant) was made to the city between 1459 and 1463 by jurist Dietrich von Bocksdorf. The library was officially established in 1677 and opened to the public in 1711. The late 18th century brought donations of scholarly collections of works from classical antiquity, and the 19th century ushered in an effort to catalog all the holdings both of manuscripts and books. A decision in 1881 to offer longer opening hours, and at the turn of the 20th century the completion of a large reading room, signaled the coming of age of the Leipzig library as a modern institution for the provision of scholarly literature. The conservation and exhibition of its treasures lent it a museum-like quality, but it continued to maintain close contact with a public interested in literature and history, until it was ravaged in the 20th century by totalitarian ideologies, with a resultant “cleansing” of many holdings and the relocation of others. Horrific bombing in December 1943 caused the loss of valuable historical materials concerning the city of Leipzig and the state of Saxony, and after the war the library suffered under the effects of Marxist library politics. In 1951 its remaining historical holdings were either transferred to other institutions or sold, and the badly damaged library was turned into a low-grade public library. In 1984 it was closed with no replacement. It reopened in May 1991, after German reunification.

In the second part of the volume, introductory comments, illustrations (many in color), and descriptions of the exhibit items detail the historical heritage of the library both before and after the Second World War. Although it may be too much to wish for an index of persons in an exhibit catalog, such an addition would have been helpful. The bibliography is useful, although lacking several relevant articles.

This outstanding publication vividly depicts the turbulent past of a public institution that was at the mercy of political vagaries and ideologies. [hpm/nb]

Sammeln und Erwerben an der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek: in memoriam Emil Gratzl (1877-1957) [Collection and Acquisition at the Bavarian State Library: In Memoriam Emil Gratzl (1877-1957)]. Ed. Klaus Haller and Klaus Kempf. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011. 171 p. ill. 25 cm. (Schriftenreihe Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 4). ISBN 978-3-447-06641-9: EUR 48 [12-1]

Emil Gratzl was head of the acquisitions department of the Bavarian State Library from around 1923 until 1938 with his untimely retirement in response to Nazi antiintellectualism. In this role he gained a reputation as the foremost practitioner of the art and science of acquisitions and collection development in contemporary German librarianship. These proceedings of a colloquium in his honor held on the occasion of his 130th birthday in December of 2007 are an opportunity to acquaint an audience of current library professionals with the Gratzl’s life and work in the context of a history of acquisitions at the Bavarian State Library both during and after his tenure. Gratzl was particularly suited to his vocation by inclination and training, and, even at a time when many German libraries were increasingly parceling out acquisitions responsibility to subject specialists, his single-handed shaping of the collections at the Library exercised a profound influence on other large German libraries as well. (The proceedings include reprintings of several of Gratzl’s writings on the practical and theoretical aspects of library acquisitions). Still, it is an open question whether this one-person dominance of the business of collecting at the State Library was an ideal situation, even during Gratzl’s own time. Articles in the book on the the subsequent development of acquistions at the Library through the 1990s (a detailed four-stage acquisitions profile is included) make clear—as Gratzl himself would no doubt have realized—that the acquisitions concern of a large research library can no longer rest on the shoulders of a single person. [mk/kst]

Wendezeit: Zeitwende in deutschen Bibliotheken: Erinnerungen aus Ost und West [The Wende: A Time of Change in German Libraries: Reminiscences from East and West]. Ed. Günter Baron and Reimar Riese. Berlin: BibSpider, 2011. 262 p. ill.. 21 cm. ISBN 978-3-936960-48-8: EUR 30 [11-4]

In this same RREA volume is the work West-östliche Bande: Erinnerungen an interdeutsche Bibliothekskontakte (see RREA 17:29), which is a compendium of remembrances of the often difficult inner-German library and librarian relations during the Cold War partition period. In Wendezeit, 11 librarians (out of 30 originally asked to participate) describe these enormous changes from their position as library directors. Four of the eleven were library directors in East German libraries before 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell.

Narratives cover such diverse topics as the physical reconstruction of the Leipzig University Library and the reorganization of its university library system; the reunification of the Berlin State Library’s special collections and the re-gathering of collections dispersed from Berlin during the Second World War; and in general the reorganization of libraries and their networks throughout the city of Berlin.

Also discussed is the revitalization of Leipzig as the city of the German book (“Buchstadt Leipzig”); the rethinking of the role of the public library, in part based on the model of the Amerika-Haus Library, now part of the Greater Berlin Public Library system, and its example of a North American public library with generous open access, user services, and lending policies.

The integration of the two library systems posed enormous challenges for library directors (and their staffs), particularly in the realm of public libraries, as Birgit Dankert writes in her essay “Am Sonntag, den 03.10.2010 (Tag der Deutschen Einheit) ist die Universitätsbibliothek geschlossen” Erinnerungen an den Beginn der Integration. deutschdeutscher Bibliotheken [On Sunday, the 3d of October 2010 (The Day of German Unity), The University Library will be Closed.” Reminiscences on the Beginning of Integrating German-German Libraries]. Despite the title, she and her staff focused primarily on public libraries.

The topic of the impact of the Wende on the Deutscher Bibliotheksverband (German Librarians Association) is the subject of Joachim Dietze’s essay. He was the director of the State and University Library in Halle since 1965, and managed to hold on to his position despite enormous pressures from the GDR communist government; because he was untainted by East German communism he continued in his position until his full retirement. Similarly, Konrad Marwinski was long employed at the Thuringian University and State Library in Jena, becoming its director in 1990. His essay Über den Nutzen von Bibliotheksreisen [On the Value of Library Travel] shows how immensely important post-1990 travel was for eastern German librarians to develop and intensify their contacts with other professional colleagues. Michael Knoche, who in 1991 came from West Germany to lead the Anna-Amalia Library in Weimar, faced similar challenges in adapting to an eastern German library culture.

Carola Pohlmann describes the Angst faced by so many eastern German librarians after 1989, as their libraries and their careers faced enormous challenges from downsizing and other threats to their existence. Even the introduction of the ISBN system into the former GDR library practices brought significant difficulties, as did the re-creation of a unified German national bibliography and union catalog.

The volume concludes with brief biographies of the authors. We are introduced to librarians from different backgrounds: some from the West who took on directorships in former GDR libraries; those from both halves of the Berlin State Library; and those who were long-time librarians in the former GDR and who rose to the occasion in the new environment. The focal points are Berlin and Leipzig, which is no surprise given their historically leading positions in German librarianship and book culture. It is, however, regrettable that this volume could not include contributions from other former East German libraries, such as the Saxon State and University Library in Dresden, whose experience in successfully fusing a major state and university library is of interest to all.

Just as history gets written by the winners, it would be extremely helpful and instructive to hear from the putative “losers” in the Wende transition. We can be grateful, however, for the contributions from these 11 colleagues, which have provided important sources for the study of contemporary library history of Germany. [mk/ga]

West-östliche Bande: Erinnerungen an interdeutsche Bibliothekskontakte [West- East Bonds: Memories of Inter-German Library Contacts]. Ed. Georg Ruppelt. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 2011. 210 p. ill. 25 cm. ISBN 978-3-465- 03700-2: EUR 54 [11-3]

The political division of Germany brought a split among German librarians. Soon after the end of World War II there were two national bibliographies, several national professional journals, and ever more circumscribed personal connections between librarians in the two Germanies. The worthy purpose of this volume is to gather the personal experiences of librarians in East and West Germany before it is too late to produce oral histories. After 1945 such opportunities were too often missed.

The volume gives us a valuable contribution to German library history after 1945. The lively reminiscences provide background information otherwise hard or impossible to access today, not only about the increasingly rare professional contact between librarians across both zones, but also about everyday life in the GDR, with its strict border controls, forced currency exchanges, economy of scarcity, and more subtle means of oppression, such as the presence of a Russian barracks right next to the regional library of Saxony. However, only two contributors to this volume spent their entire careers in the GDR. As the editors are aware, more such voices ought to be given a chance to speak. Some authors suffered directly from the East German regime; for instance, before the wall was built many employees of the German National Library in East Berlin lived in the three western sectors of the city. The index of persons lets one see quickly the varied and not always positive views on individual actors on the divided German library scene.

It would still be good to ask these witnesses more questions, such as: what was the effect of Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski’s plundering of East German library materials through his Kommerielle Koordination (KOKO) organization in order to sell them for hard currency in the 1960s through 1980s? What were the experiences of West German librarians installed in leadership positions in East German libraries after 1989? How did the locals judge the “rebuilding of the East?” Some of these gaps are filled in by the recent festschrift 100. Deutscher Bibliothekartag (see RREA 17:19). [mk/rb]

Bücher unter Verdacht: NS-Raub- und Beutegut an der SUB Göttingen: Katalog der Ausstellung vom 13. Mai bis 10. Juli 2011 [Books under Suspicion: NSLooted Items at the State and University Library in Göttingen; Catalog of the Exhibition Held 13 May to 10 July 2011]. Ed. Nicole Bartels. Göttingen: Universitätsverlag, 2011. 101 p. ill. (Göttinger Bibliotheksschriften, 38). ISBN 978-3-86395-027-9: EUR 18 [12-3]

A search for looted books in the larger state and university libraries of Germany and Austria has intensified in recent years, as evidenced by numerous publications on the subject (many of which have also been reviewed in RREA). At the State and University Library of Lower Saxony in Göttingen, extramural funding sponsored a program to identify, document, and verify suspicious items in the Library’s holdings, enabling selective restitution of the looted material, as well as the exhibition that is the subject of this catalog.

At Göttingen, as with other large research libraries in Germany during the era of National Socialism, racially or politically unwanted librarians were dismissed, unacceptable literature locked away, and Jews restricted from access to the Library. The Library’s Director, Karl Julius Hartmann, although a member of the Nazi Party, was lukewarm to the cause and able to keep concessions to the regime within bounds. Nonetheless, the Library became the repository for forbidden books from public libraries (notably the Hamburg-Harburg public library) and private collections, including those of the communist Walter Heise, Social Democratic leader Heinrich Troeger and Jewish academicians Friedrich and Hanns Fischl. From 1939 onward the Library received countless volumes looted from the occupied countries of Europe, and even after the war its holdings were augmented by books from POW camps in Germany. Initially, as was the practice generally, Göttingen—still under Hartmann’s directorship until 1958—denied the existence of the looted books among its holdings. Individual requests for restitution, e.g., by the Hamburg-Harburg Library, were routinely dismissed. A notable exception was the return, under pressure from the Allies, of approximately 33,000 volumes to the Bibliotheque Nationale et Universitaire Strasbourg.

Of the approximately 100,000 documented accessions between 1933 and 1950, some 8,000 titles initially fell under suspicion, of which only 1,000 have thus been confirmed. A continuing effort to research provenance, albeit not as intensive, will extend to the Library’s smaller branches and affiliates. In the meantime, this catalog documents all confirmed and suspected cases of looted literature in the Göttingen library. [mk/kst]

Wissenschaftliche Bibliothekare im Nationalsozialismus: Handlungsspielräume, Kontinuitäten, Deutungsmuster [Research Librarians in National Socialism: Room for Maneuver, Continuities, Patterns of Interpretation]. Ed. Michael Knoche. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011. 381 p. ill. 25 cm. (Wolfenbütteler Schriften zur Geschichte des Buchwesens, 46). ISBN 978-3-447-06407-1: EUR 89 [11-4]

The present volume comprises the proceedings of a conference held in December 2009 in Dresden on the topic of the stance of research librarians in Germany and Austria during the Nazi reign. The focus is on the relatively few individuals of higher rank who were non-political or who were critical of the regime. Topics addressed also include archives, as well as the diminished role of women librarians. This carefully edited and richly illustrated volume represents a substantial contribution to the history of libraries during the National Socialist era and will remain an important milestone. The conference also produced valuable suggestions for additional research. See reviews in RREA 14:40-45 and RREA 15/16:184 for more works on the subject of looted books and the quest for identification and restitution. [mk/rlk]

NS-Provenienzforschung an österreichischen Bibliotheken: Anspruch und Wirklichkeit [Research on Nazi Provenance in Austrian Libraries: Challenge and Reality]. Ed. Bruno Bauer, Christina Köstner-Pemsel, and Markus Stumpf. Graf; Feldkirch: Neugebauer, 2011. 542 p. ill. 23 cm. ISBN 978-3-85376-290-5: EUR 59.90 [12-1]

Since the 1998 passage of the Austrian Kunstrückgabegesetz (art restitution law) libraries in Austria have been intensely involved in the identification of looted cultural property from the Nazi era in their collections. The results of their efforts have been published in several recent reports, such as Bibliotheken in der NS-Zeit: Povenienzforschung und Bibliotheksgeschichte (see RREA 14:43) and especially Murray Hall and Christina Köstner’s ...allerlei für die Nationalbibliothek zu ergattern: eine österreichische Institution in der NS-Zeit […Grabbing Everything for the National Library: An Austrian Institution in the Nazi Period] (Wien, 2006—see IFB 06-2-189). The investigations at the Austrian National Library are for the most part finished, but they are still underway in many private libraries. It seems unlikely that any major library in Austria does not contain books seized during the Third Reich, and so nearly all academic, state, museum, and agency libraries have been trying to identify them.

The establishment of a working group on Nazi provenance research within the Association of Austrian Librarians shows clearly that this work is taken seriously. As one discovers from the introductory remarks in this volume, that was not the case before the 1990s in Austria, where many who ought to be counted among the guilty were content to don the mantle of victimhood. The reports and project descriptions in this volume detail the fates of Nazi-organized libraries and individual collections stolen mainly from Jews and other Holocaust victims, the painstaking but often fruitless efforts to locate heirs, and the role of the secondhand-book market in “laundering” stolen books into postwar library collections. Appendices provide abstracts and keywords for the reports, short biographies, bibliographies, and indexes of persons and subjects, as well as a useful if necessarily incomplete list of closed and open restitution cases. The book is useful both as a report on the current status of provenance research in Austria and as an introduction and reference to others pursuing such research. [mk/rb]

Geschichte der Universitätsbibliothek Graz 1938-1945 [History of the Graz University Library]. Katharina Bergmann-Pfleger. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011. 286 p. ill. 25 cm. (Buchforschung, 6). ISBN 978-3-447-06569-6: EUR 64 [12-1]

This monograph owes its creation to the intensive research being done on Nazi-looted goods in Austria. The author, Katharina Bergman-Pfleger, is also a contributor to the 2011 monograph NS-Provenienzforschung an österreichischen Bibliotheken (see RREA 17:32), and is the co-author in that volume of the chapter on the Graz University Library. In this work, also her 2010 dissertation from Vienna University, she situates the library’s post-Anschluss history in the context of the events affecting the entire Austrian university library system.

In 1989 Manfred Hirschegger published his Geschichte der Universitätsbibliothek Graz 1918-1945, but the subject of looted materials in the collections was not a major topic then. Even in Walter Höflechner’s 2008 Geschichte der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz: von den Anfängen bis in das Jahr 2008 (see RREA 15/16:159), the subject was given only some five pages of text near the end of the book. Thus, Bergmann-Pfleger fills out the story in her work.

National-German feelings ran high in post-World War I Austria, long before the “return home” to the Greater German Reich. Thus, after the “Annexation” began a whole-scale purge of undesired persons. The directors of the Graz University Library, Franz Gosch, and of the Vienna University Library, Paul Heigl, were staunch Nazis even when the party was outlawed in Austria. In 1938, then, those who had been critical of Nazi ideology and actions, like Graz University Library deputy director Wolfgang Benndorf, were immediately dismissed. Bergmann-Pfleger includes portraits of these and other library administrators, such as Benndorf, who in a complete turnabout replaced Gosch (who was summarily dismissed) at the war’s end.

Nazification of library policies and politics and the rapid decline of personnel due to widespread military service made normal work routines extremely difficult, but the Graz University Library was spared almost all damage from bombing and other wartime destruction. On the other hand, the war also offered unimagined new means for expanding the collections. Because of greatly shrunken budgets, acquiring confiscated and looted books in Germany and all of Europe provided significant no-cost acquisitions and collection growth, through gifts and exchanges rather than by direct monetary purchase.

Almost half the author’s book is devoted to the subject of provenance determination. Researchers examined 33,273 titles acquired between 1938 and 1945 and found 12,998 of them to be suspicious, of which 11,771 were traceable. However, only 1,775 items could be confirmed as having been looted, a relatively small harvest. The author provides detailed lists, covering almost 100 pages, of the library’s precise and thorough acquisitions records. These included the source of acquisition (e.g., Central Exchange Office, book dealers), the price (usually listed as a gift), and notations of ownership (stamps, ex-libris plates, or handwritten entries from institutions or private individuals).

In Katharina Bergmann-Pfleger’s book we have the description of systematic research into looted works in a major Austrian university library. The task of determining prewar ownership is immense: detailed, methodical, and systematic, it proceeds in many small incremental steps. This methodology is also indispensable to separating property stolen during the “brown years” from otherwise legitimate acquisitions. And still there is the further work of restoring stolen property to its rightful owners. This work is ongoing, with plans to extend the project to acquisitions from the years 1945-1955 in university libraries. [mk/ga]

Das Kloster Muri: Geschichte und Gegenwart der Benediktinerabtei [The Monastery of Muri: Past and Present of the Benedictine Abbey]. Bruno Meier. Baden: hier + jetzt, 2011. 167 p. ill. 31 cm. ISBN 978-3-03-919215-1: SFr. 58, EUR 44 [12-4]

In 2027 the Benedictine Abbey located until 1841 in Muri, Switzerland and since 1845 in Gries, Italy, will celebrate the 1000th anniversary of its founding. Among the recent publications on the abbey is Das Koster Muri, a history of the abbey at its two locations. The work presents the eventful history of the abbey from its founding by the Habsburgs up to the present, in a volume with beautiful, mainly colored, illustrations. There is also a short chapter on the history of the monastery library, its archives, and its treasures. Appendixes contain a list the abbots and a bibliography of secondary literature for those interested in delving more deeply into the monastery’s history. [hpm/jc]

Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in der Schweiz [Handbook of the Historical Book Collections in Switzerland]. Urs B. Leu et al. for the Zentralbibliothek Zürich. 3 vols. Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 2011. 485, 521, 621 p. 30 cm. ISBN 978-3-487-14583-9 (set): EUR 384 [12-3]

This title is the print edition of a guide to Swiss libraries, which has already been made partially available online at the Zentralbibliothek Zürich [Zürich Central Library] (http://www.zb.uzh.ch/spezialsammlungen/alte-drucke-rara/handbuchhistorisch). Volumes for library holdings in Germany and Austria, and for German collections in other European countries are already available both in print and electronic formats and have been reviewed extensively (see RREA 13:37-38). Like the volumes for Germany and Austria, the Swiss edition includes libraries of all sizes, as well as selected archives.

The arrangement of the entries is by canton, and within each canton alphabetically by place. The three volumes contain: (1) Aargau to Jura, (2) Lucerne to Thurgau, and (3) Uri to Zürich, with the last volume providing an index to the entire work. The articles are in French, German or Italian, corresponding to the language area of the country. Each is in five sections: (1) collection history, (2) collection description (with chronological, language and subject arrangement), (3) catalogs (modern, general, and specialized), (4) sources of the library’s history, and (5) publications about the collections.

Unfortunately the articles do not give a report date for the state of each collection, which would have been helpful considering the 11-year production span. There is an index of personal names that is very useful for determining provenance. The subject index has German and French sections, although the lack of normalization in the dual-language subject keyword indexes is problematic. In the introduction the editor notes that with entries for 170 Swiss libraries, the majority of the publicly accessible collections in Switzerland are described, although for some institutions articles are lacking, possibly to be covered in a supplement. It is to be hoped that the complete work will eventually be made freely available on line as part of the website Handbuch der historischen Buchbestände in Deutschland, Österreich und Europa (http:fabian.sub. uni-goettingen.de). This would provide the opportunity for adding report dates to existing articles, as well as descriptions of additional collections, rather than waiting for a “possible” future supplement. [sh/jc]

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