Kassel University Library

Coordinates: 51°19′18″N 9°30′19″E / 51.3218°N 9.5052°E / 51.3218; 9.5052
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

View of the Landes- und Murhardschen Bibliothek, 2004
View of the University Library

The Universitätsbibliothek Kassel (or Kassel University Library) is a library located in the city of

Hildebrandslied
.

The first component of the library, the Landesbibliothek, evolved from the collection of the

Landgraves of Hesse, and was officially made a "state library" with the Hesse Constitution of 1831. Its collection was housed at the Fridericianum
, continental Europe's first public museum, and specialized in the fields of history, philology, archaeology, art, geography, theology, and law.

The second component library, the Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel long served as the city's second research library. Founded in 1845 by the brothers Friedrich and Karl Murhard, sons of an old Hessian merchant dynasty, it specialized in political science, economics, and pedagogy.

The British Royal Air Force destroyed most of the library by aerial bombing on 9 September 1943, about 7/8 of its holdings of ca. 400,000 volumes. Even the books kept in safes smoldered away due to the surrounding heat. The Zwehren Tower, however, which holds large parts of the manuscripts, remains unscathed.[1][2]

The third component library comprised the holdings of Kassel University, founded in it modern incarnation in 1970.

The three libraries were merged into a single system in 1976.

References

  • Popa, Opritsa D. (2003) Bibliophiles and Bibliothieves: the search for the Hildebrandslied and the Willehalm Codex. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter

Further reading

Karl Bernhardi (1799–1874), librarian of the Landesbibliothek Kassel, 1859–74

References

  1. ^ Flachowsky, Sören (2018). "Zeughaus für die Schwerter des Geistes" - Die Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig, 1912-1945. Vol. 1. Göttingen: Wallenstein. p. 1158.
  2. ^ "Schwerer alliierter Bombenangriff auf das Zentrum von Kassel und Zerstörung der Landesbibliothek im Fridericianum, 8. - 9. September 1941". Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen. Retrieved 3 November 2023.

External links

51°19′18″N 9°30′19″E / 51.3218°N 9.5052°E / 51.3218; 9.5052