Libraries

In the Middle Ages the monasteries possessed in their collections of MSS. the only real libraries. Those of Fulda, Reichenau, and St Gall were especially notable. Princely and royal libraries were instituted from the 16th c. on, partly by the secularization of monasteries. Among these new libraries were the Hofbibliothek in Vienna, founded in 1526, and the electoral collections in Dresden (1556) and Munich (1558), all of which have within the last century become national or state libraries.

The Bibliotheca Palatina, founded in Heidelberg in 1555 and augmented by the Fuggers in 1584, was the greatest German library of the 16th c., but its later history is complex, the most important MSS. and incunabula being surrendered to the Pope in 1633. Many of these were seized by the French in Rome in 1797 and brought to Paris. A number were returned to Heidelberg in 1814-16. The greater part of the Bibliotheca Palatina is, however, still in the Vatican Library. The Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel became a centre of learning in the early part of the 17th c. under Duke August of Brunswick, a discerning collector of books. The first properly organized university library was that of the new University of Göttingen (1737) in the Electorate of Hanover.

The modern German universal library is the Deutsche Bücherei, founded in Leipzig in 1912. After the division of Germany in 1945, a parallel institution was founded in West Germany, the Deutsche Bibliothek (1946). All the German Länder, universities, and larger cities have substantial libraries available for public use, and many specialized libraries have also been instituted, of which the best known are the Goethe-Nationalmuseum in Weimar, the Freies Deutsches Hochstift Goethe-Museum in Frankfurt, the Schiller Nationalmuseum in Marbach including the Deutsches Literaturarchiv, and the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar.