Bavarian State Library: Books Burned, Bombed and Stolen
Why is it significant?
Stop in front of the long brick palace on Ludwigstraße and look at the broad steps leading up to its entrance. Four seated stone figures guard them: Thucydides, Homer, Aristotle and Hippocrates, history, poetry, philosophy and medicine.
Key Facts
| Place | Bavarian State Library: Books Burned, Bombed and Stolen |
|---|---|
| Address | Ludwigstraße 16, 80539 München, Germany |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.14740, 11.58060 |
| Part of Walk | Munich 1918-1945: The Nazi Era, Its Victims and the White Rose |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop in front of the long brick palace on Ludwigstraße and look at the broad steps leading up to its entrance. Four seated stone figures guard them: Thucydides, Homer, Aristotle and Hippocrates, history, poetry, philosophy and medicine. This is the Bavarian State Library, one of the great libraries of Europe.
It was built between 1832 and 1843 by Friedrich von Gärtner for King Ludwig the First, who wanted his avenue lined with temples of learning. Inside are millions of books and some of the most precious manuscripts in the world. Books are the thread of this stop, because the Nazi years attacked them three times.
The first attack was fire. On the 10th of May 1933, in cities across Germany, students and party members burned books by Jewish, socialist and pacifist authors. In Munich the bonfire was lit on Königsplatz, the square you saw earlier. The poet Heinrich Heine had written a century before that where books are burned, in the end people will be burned too.
The second attack came from the sky. Allied bombs destroyed most of this building, and around half a million volumes were lost. The rarest treasures survived because librarians had moved them out of the city to safer places in time, crate by crate. After the war the library was rebuilt behind its old facade.
The third attack is the quietest. During the Nazi years, books stolen from Jewish families, from emigrants and from organisations that had been banned flowed into German libraries, this one included. Today the library's researchers go through its shelves, volume by volume, looking for owners' stamps, names and dedications, and return what they can to the heirs. Every returned book is a small life found again. Now continue north along Ludwigstraße to the university, where the two fountains splash on either side of the road.