News archive

In its annual report, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek regularly reports about the library's development in the preceding year, with images and texts that will – hopefully – catch your attention and pique your curiosity with regard to the offers and services of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek receives the personal papers of Eugen Roth (1895 – 1976), one of the best-known German lyricists of the 20th century. The personal papers of the Munich-born author include, among other things, the manuscripts of his printed and unprinted works, press articles, diaries and his correspondence. The personal papers of Eugen Roth constitute one of the most important recent acquisitions of the library’s collection of personal papers.

We are pleased to welcome 39 new colleagues, who have concluded their FaMI training recently. At the certificate presentation in the Fürstensaal of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek on 22 July they celebrated their graduation as specialists for media and information services (Fachangestelle/Fachangesteller für Medien- und Informationsdienste, FaMI) in the field of librarianship.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek holds one of the world's largest collections of microfilmed archival documents worldwide. There is a focus on the history of East Europe, in particular the Russian or Soviet and Ukrainian history of the 19th and early 20th century. This unique collection thus offers access to archival documents which are hard to come by for an unforeseeable time, due to Russia attacking Ukraine.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek amends its house rules, applicable as of 15 July 2024. In the future, it is permitted to take photographs of pages from library holdings in the reading rooms, provided that no flash light is used, other visitors are not incommoded and legal provisions, such as copyright, personal rights and data protection rules are complied with.

The project DeepGreen, to which the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek contributes as a project partner, has received the Enter Award in the category infrastructure. The Enter Award is a German prize for open access, sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research and implemented by iRights.Lab.

There are numerous courses for you to learn more about expedient search tools, obtain tips for using the library and improve your search capabilities. A number of new topics have been added to the known range of courses.

Rafael Seligmann donates his entire literary work to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The pre-death estate includes, in addition to his literary work, also over 2,000 articles, essays, reviews of his books, television plays, radio shows, interviews, his correspondence with personalities from political and cultural life, as well as numerous personal documents

The civil settlement Augusta Vindelicum was the prospering capital of the Roman province Rhaetia and an important trade centre as of the first century AD. The new virtual exhibition in bavarikon gives visitors an insight into the life of the people at the time.

The analogue photo archive of the journal stern with its 15 million prints, negatives and slides is considered as the visual memory of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1948 to 2001. Having acquired the archive in the year 2019, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek now makes the one millionth digitized picture available online in the specially set up portal www.stern-Fotoarchiv.de.

An initial 21,000 pictures of the photographer Isolde Ohlbaum are already available online – in the new picture portal of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The photographer Isolde Ohlbaum is one of the most famous chroniclers of the national and international literary and artistic scenes.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has launched a new web service for researchers, the BSBlab. The BSBlab is the central point to go to for everybody wanting to use the digital resources of the library for experimentation or analysis.

bavarikon, Bavaria's digital treasure trove, wants to establish a particularly low-threshold access to history and culture with a new editorial service: An extra website, bavarikon4u.de, was set up for this purpose, where brief, entertaining contents are offered in easily understandable form. The objective is to facilitate access to the world of art and culture particularly for a younger public.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has just activated an image-based similarity search for bavarikon, Bavaria's digital treasure vault. The development from the library's own Munich Digitization Center (MDZ) searches through over three million image segments in the portal from photos, graphics, paintings and illustrations recognized through machine learning. Everybody interested in culture can search for motifs quickly and efficiently now, or can enjoy drifting from one image to another.

"WEITER WISSEN. Mit uns." – "KNOW MORE. With us." is the motto of a campaign initiated by a number of important scholarly libraries to raise awareness of their unique work for scholarship and society.

What is hidden behind the heavy wooden doors at Ludwigstraße 16, what cultural assets are in the collections and how did it all begin?

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek recently acquired one of the world's most famous works of art, the "Great Wave" by Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849). "Under the Wave off Kanagawa", which is the actual title of the coloured woodblock print, was created by Hokusai in the years 1830/32. The work forms part of his presumably most famous series of woodblock prints, the "36 views of Mount Fuji". It could be acquired from a private collection for a price in the lower 7-digit range. The print forms the conclusion and at the same time apex of a series of acquisitions of works by Hokusai by the library in the course of the past months.

The cultural portal bavarikon presents its new appearance on time for its tenth anniversary. Bavaria's digital treasure vault has revised its website and, at bavarikon.de, offers an optically and functionally improved access to the world of art, culture and gems of knowledge from Bavarian museums, archives and libraries.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek could again expand its Japanese collection by an outstanding work by Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849). The new acquisition is the famous coloured woodblock print "South wind, clear sky", better known as "Red Fuji".

Two important manuscripts by the Persian poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi (1207 – 1273) have been entered in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. The two works – from the holdings of the State Library of Berlin and of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek – form part of a joint application encompassing a total of 15 manuscripts, which was filed by six countries under the lead of the Turkish UNESCO Commission.

The stern Photo Archive of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has been launched online. The library thus makes one of the most important visual archives of the Federal Republic accessible to the public. At stern-fotoarchiv.de the first 250,000 pictures of the total of around 15 million pictures are available for scholars, the public and commercial use. The portal is under construction and is expanded continuously.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has managed to complement its extensive Japanese collection by an outstanding work: The woodblock print "Thunderstorm in the foothills of the Fuji" by Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849), the great master of Japanese coloured woodblock printing, could be bought from a Japanese private collection.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek acquires the entire photographic work of Isolde Ohlbaum from 1970 up to the present, composed of black-and-white negatives, coloured slides and image files. The archive also includes voluminous correspondence with portrayed persons of the literary and cultural life.

The Joint Science Conference of the Federal State and the Laender took a decision on the applications of the third call for tender round for the national research data infrastructure (Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur, NFDI) at their meeting on 4 November 2022. The consortium NFDI4Memory coordinated under the lead of the Leibniz Institute for European History, Mainz, was approved.

More than 3,000 volumes are comprised by the top-class collection of medicine-historical works donated to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek by Prof. Dr. med. Dr. h. c. mult. Gerd Plewig, long-time Director of the Hospital and Polyclinic for Dermatology and Allergology in Munich, and his wife Dr. med. Helga Lincke-Plewig.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the National Library of Kosova "Pjetër Bogdani" signed a cooperation agreement today, on Friday, 28 October 2022, in the presence of the Bavarian State Minister for Sciences, Research and the Arts, Markus Blume, the Kosovar Minister for Culture, Youth and Sports, Hajrulla Ҫeku, and the Kosovar Consul General in Munich, Afrim Nura. The agreement envisages a closer cooperation of the two institutions in numerous fields of library activities.

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has acquired the archive of the photographer Nikolai Molodovsky (1899 – 1986), which includes around 69,000 images. Nikolai Molodovsky documented everyday life in the Bavarian countryside during the time after the war, thereby creating impressive snapshots which frequently tell stories. The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek further expands its important Image Archive – the largest of its kind held by any German public-sector institution – by this unique collection of materials from Bavaria.

After you have logged in on the web page of our booking system, you can now view and manage your bookings in a newly designed overview.

Within the scope of a 2-year project, a collection of historical children’s and adolescents’ books will be catalogued at the regional State Library of Coburg. The library had received the collection as a present in 2019. The collection comprising over 1,600 titles belonged to Dr. Ernst Hofmann, the former director of the German Toy Museum in Sonneberg, and his wife Christine Hofmann.

The Annual Report for 2021 contains the current key figures and reports about the events of the past year, such as the acquisitions of the photo archives of Volker Hinz and Karsten de Riese, the new acquisitions in the fields of manuscripts and the Orient and Asia, the new BSB working-place reservation system and projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).