News archive

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek offers a broad spectrum of literature and search possibilities – no matter whether you require material for scholarly works, for professional or private further training and education. Our courses are intended to help you find your way through the information jungle. We are looking forward to your visit!

Inspired by Hermann Lingg's (1820 – 1905) humorous poem "Das Krokodil zu Singapur" ("The crocodile of Singapore"), the association of poets from Munich was called "Das Krokodil" or "Die Krokodile" when it was founded in 1857. In line with this, the symbol of the association was of course a crocodile. A new virtual exhibition at bavarikon now presents a portrait of this poets' society.

The digital source collection "The Chernobyl Files. Declassified Documents of the Ukrainian KGB" has been acquired recently within the scope of the Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies. It makes Ukrainian and Soviet governmental documents on the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl accessible free of charge Germany-wide and at German institutes abroad.

The city of Munich in particular celebrates the 200th birthday of Max von Pettenkofer on 3 December 2018, since the city owes its modern sewer system and the central drinking water supply to Germany's first hygienist, so that Munich was considered one of the world's cleanest cities at the end of the 19th century.

22 November 2018 – 29 March 2019
Cabinet presentation from the series "Musical treasures"
A cabinet presentation in the hallway leading to the Reading Room for Music, Maps and Images is centred on two of the most important German composers of the first half of the 20th century, whose personal papers are preserved by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: Heinrich Kaminski (1886 – 1946) and Hugo Distler (1908 – 1942).

In the autumn of 2018, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek acquired an important supplement of the personal papers (Ana 652) of Hermann Kaulbach (1846 – 1909). The son of the "prince of painters" Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805 – 1874) became famous as a genre painter in particular. At the same time, he was at the centre of the Munich society. The most notable persons of his time were frequent guests at his house.

As of November 2018, the Specialised Information Services for Historical Studies and for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies offer access to 55,000 digitized interviews recorded in 62 countries and in 41 languages, predominantly with survivors of the Holocaust.

On 31 October 2018, the 300,000th title has been entered in the Bibliography of German History (DHB). The DHB is developed within the scope of historicum.net – Specialised Information Service for Historical Studies.

400 square metres, 130 new workplaces, modern design and high quality of stay: On 9 November 2018, at 11:00, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek inaugurates the new "Plaza" on the ground floor of the library building in Ludwigstrasse. The new space with a wide variety of workplace scenarios is the next step towards further improving services for the library users.

Revolutionary moves, the spirit of 1968 in Munich, writers, painters and artists in and around Breitbrunn on the Chiemsee – the Literaturportal Bayern presents new contents again on interesting historical and regional aspects of Bavarian literature in its modules Blog, Themen (topics) and Literaturland (land of literature).

As a result of a four-year DFG project, an online database has now been made accessible on Western and Central-Asian adorned and luxurious book bindings and covers from the holdings of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

To mark the 100th birthday of the Free State, bavarikon presents the exciting and dramatic history of its beginnings in a virtual exhibition. Five chronological sections and an in-depth presentation bring the revolutionary years 1918/ 19 closer to you. The focus lies on the events taking place in Munich, which were decisive for the whole of Bavaria. In addition, diverse developments in ten other locations of Old Bavaria, Franconia and Swabia will be included.

Compiled by Juliane Trede in cooperation with Anja Freckmann, the third catalogue of the medieval Latin manuscripts from Augsburg preserved by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek contains descriptions of a total of 84 codices. By the exception of one book, all volumes are from the cathedral library of Augsburg, meaning that the complete collection from Augsburg held by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, which includes a total of 209 books, has now been catalogued.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has been presented with a beautiful gold-ruby glass cup from private ownership as a supplement to the personal estate of the classical philologist Friedrich Wilhelm von Thiersch (1784 – 1860). Thiersch had received the cup on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his doctorate.

The modern historian Ewald Frie gives a first résumé after a good two years of operation of the Specialised Information Service for Historical Studies (FID Historical Studies). Ewald Frie is a professor for modern history at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen and a member of the advisory council of the FID Historical Studies.

Within the scope of the Specialised Information Service for Russian, East and Southeast European Studies the collections "Donetsk and Luhansk Newspaper Collection" and "South Ossetia Presidential Election, 2011 – 2012" have recently been made accessible free of charge Germany-wide and at German institutes abroad.

A few days ago, musiconn.kontrovers has gone online, the new blog in the Specialised Information Service for Musicology. The blog is intended for discussing the core issues of the subject field in regular posts. We are looking forward to lively debate and your contributions!

1 October – 16 November 2018
Cabinet presentation of the Image Archive
The building of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in the Ludwigstrasse was completed 175 years ago and thus inaugurated in 1843 – after a construction period of eleven years. King Ludwig I had commissioned the architect Friedrich von Gärtner with this project already shortly after his accession to power.

The September update has bavarikon vault over the quarter-million mark: Over 250,000 high-resolution digital copies and data sets have been made available online now. This demonstrates the success of the digitization campaign, which also involves smaller institutions in the Free State of Bavaria.

Titled "Gott, die Welt und Bayern", the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek presents one hundred highlights of the ten regional State Libraries of Bavaria in its treasure vaults from 17 October 2018 to 7 July 2019. Up to 13 January 2019, the first part of the tripartite exhibition series shows valuable medieval manuscripts and printed works up to the time of the Reformation, among them the famous World Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel or the so-called "Lorscher Arzneibuch", which forms part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

In recent weeks, a number of problems unfortunately have occurred with respect to the provision of the BayernWLAN at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. We are sorry for these failures and limitations of service. For providing the BayernWLAN, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek uses the infrastructure of the network Münchner Wissenschaftsnetz, and is therefore not in a position to interfere with the network's operation or the repair of technical defects.

The Specialised Information Services for Historical Studies and Anglo-American Culture have enabled access to the historical newspapers "The Guardian" (1821 – 2003) and "The Observer" (1791 – 2003), as well as "The New Statesman and Nation" (1913 – 2000) as of 19 September 2018.

The biannual Historikertag is Europe's biggest congress in the field of humanities. In 2018, historicum.net is present even twice in the programme.

With musiconn.scoresearch you can search for melodies in the digitized complete editions of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek of Beethoven, Händel, Liszt and Schubert based on the output of an OMR program ("optical music recognition"). This application has been developed by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek within the project Specialised Information Service for Musicology (musiconn) and enables you to directly search in the music of these four famous composers.

A new, highly informative issue with very many different articles is waiting for you. An event series with State Minister Bernd Sibler, who is the chairman of the Bavarian Library Association at the same time, shows the important role of libraries in the life-long learning process of the population.

A few weeks ago, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek received the so-called 100-sheet map of the Russian empire ("Stolistovaya") as a present from private ownership. Consisting of 107 sheets, the work published in Saint Petersburg from 1801 to 1804 constitutes the first multi-sheet, official map of Russia and accordingly a central source of Russian cartography in the 19th century.

In August, the Image Archive of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has uploaded a further 1,200 images to the online catalogue. Among them are numerous recent acquisitions, such as a coloured steel engraving of the French general Louis Alexandre Berthier (1753), who was married to a Bavarian princess and niece of King Max I Joseph.

Titled "preserve – collect – discover", the regularly published annual report of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek gives an up-to-date picture of the institution. If you would like to learn more about the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, its key figures, highlights and organisation structures, you can now also retrieve the current annual report for 2017 online.

The foundation of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek was laid 460 years ago with the important scholar's library of the Austrian chancellor Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter. It was already in the spring of 1558 that Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria bought the personal estate of Widmannstetter for confessional-political reasons. Widmannstetter's collection included not only a thousand manuscripts and printed works in the Latin, Greek, Hebrew and some oriental languages, but also important contemporary documents.

On 12 July 2018, a further project for in-depth cataloguing by the Manuscript Center was approved: "Medieval manuscripts: Cataloguing the illuminated manuscripts of French provenance at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Munich. Project part 2: Manuscripts of the 15th and early 16th century". With a project term of three years, the in-depth cataloguing of the illuminated manuscripts of non-German provenance thus can be concluded.