DHM - German Historical Museum, Berlin
German Historical Museum
German Historical Museum

The collections of the German Historical Museum

Library › Rare books

Responsible: Dr. Matthias Miller

Library (rare books)

The library considers historical and rare books to be of special value as objects for exhibition purposes. The holdings of the section of rare books (c. 20,000 volumes) is being extended permanently by new acquisitions. Besides valuable and rare prints, the collection also contains copper engravings, first editions of German literature, philosophy, natural science, technology, and mass productions such as leaflets, calenders, almanacs, and popular literature of all kinds, even brochures from the era of the Cold War.

The collection includes:

  • some historico-culturally remarkable hand-written manuscripts, including a double-sided leaf of parchment from the Heliand epic (c. 830), two breviaries (mid-15th and early 16th centuries), as well as the 9th and 10th volumes of the Spruchgedichte (1535 and 1555) written by the popular poet and meistersinger Hans Sachs with typical book covers from the Renaissance. These volumes belong to the well-known copies that Sachs kept in his house until his death.

  • 43 incunabula, including Schedel's Weltchronik (Nürnberg 1493), the first latin translation of Christopher Columbus' account on the discovery of the New World, Epistola de insulis nuper inventis (Rome 1493), the Chronik von Cöln (Köln 1499), Konrad of Megenberg's Buch der Natur (2. ed., Augsburg 1478), and the notorious book on witch hunting, Malleus maleficarum, written by Heinrich Institoris and Jakob Sprenger (Speyer 1487).

  • a large section of 16th and 17th century literature. For the time between 1500 and 1550 there are approximately 540 books and leaflets on hand. For example, 200 works by Martin Luther, including the culturally important Septembertestament (Wittenberg 1522), a two volume de luxe edition of the Bible printed on parchment by Heinrich Steiner (Augsburg 1535) from the possessions of the Reichsgrafen of Ortenburg, and the 95 Theses on the selling of indulgences (Basel 1517). Worth mentioning are also Ulrich von Hutten's Gespräch büchlin (Straßburg 1521) with a program for the liberation of Germany from papal supremacy, the famous Dunkelmännerbriefe, Epistolae obscurorum virorum (Hagenau 1515), the Wittenberger und Hallesche Heiltumbuch (1509, 1520), including the collection of relics of Friedrich dem Weisen von Sachsen und Brandenburg, Sebanstian Brant's moral satire Das Narrenschiff (Basel 1520), and the bull threatening excommunication of Pope Leo X. Bulla contra errores Martini Lutheri et sequacium (Rome 1520), but also the manifesto of the Peasants' War, Die Grundlichen und rechten Hauptartikel aller Bauernschaft (Augsburg 1525).

    the scientific literature of this time is represented by works of Johannes Kepler, Georg Agricola, Adam Riese, Peter Apian, Euklid, Galileo Galilei, Albrecht Dürer, medical works by Andreas Vesalius, Paracelsus, and Leonhard Thurnneysser zum Thurn, and geographical-topological works by Sebastian Münster, Claudius Ptolemäus and Martin Zeiller/Matthäus Merian. Town chronicles by Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg (1572-1618) complete the holdings of this section.

  • especially large is the inventory of the 18th century. Noteworthy are: the Universal Lexicon (Halle, Leipzig 1732-1750) by Johann Heinrich Zedler, the Oeconomische Encyklopädie (Berlin 1773ff.) by Johann Georg Krünitz, and the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens et de lettres (Lausanne, Bern 1779-1782) in 36 volumes by Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert. In the field of literature and philosophy, examples include more than 200 first editions of the leading Geman representatives of the Enlightenment and Classicism. Literature on the armed conflicts of this era, such as the Seven Years' War, the Silesian Wars, the Austrian War of Succession, the Nordic War, the Turkish Wars, and a large number of works on the history of Brandenburg and Prussia complete this section.

  • For the 19th and 20th centuries, the section of rare books maintains typical documents of the progessive and revolutionary movements. Among the very rare books are those works from the time of early socialism, e.g. a copy of the Kommunistische Manifest (presumably Köln 1850) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the volume Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England (Leipzig 1845) by Engels, as well as leaflets from the Revolution 1848. A large collection of original works of the early social democracy, including books by August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, and furthermore works on the labor question, autobiographies of individual workers, and party platforms document the development and the conflicts of the Labor movement in the German Empire. For the time of the Weimar Republic, the collection includes writings of parties and organizations, leaflets from the November Revolution 1919, books by the Malik publishing house, and a large number of single editions by bourgeois-humanistic and proletarian-revolutionary authors.

    from the era of the Third Reich there are on hand the writings of the NSDAP as well as evidences for the Resistance, and 300 works by exile authors.

  • Numerous volumes exist for the time after 1945, especially for the history of East Germany and documentary works from the era of the Cold War.

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