Focus Areas

The Eastern Europe Collection focuses on the humanities and social sciences. In addition to the acquisition for our Specialised Information Service Slavonic Studies and Law, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the department has the following focus areas:

• Russian Church Slavonic prints of the 16th - 19th centuries Church
• Art and cultural history of the years 1913 - 1930, including Russian prints published in Berlin
• Regional studies Eastern European countries.

Baltic Collections

Important Baltic collections can be found in the literary estates of the Lithuanian politician and professor of Protestant theology at the University of Kaunas Vilius Gaigalaitis (1870 - 1945) and the Göttingen linguist Eduard Hermann (1863 - 1950). The Depositum Gaigalaitis is available in microform format after return of the originals to Lithuania in 1997.

Manucscripts

Our Department Manuscripts and Early Printed Books holds the Croatian Glagolitic "Berlin Missal" (Missale Romanum, call number: Ms. Ham. 444) from the year 1402 and the probably most valuable collection of old Serbian manuscripts in Germany, namely the Collection Wuk, named after the Serbian enlightener and language reformer Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787-1864), are kept.

Further Holdings

A lot of further Eastern European holdings like early printed books and manuscripts, maps, official publications, newspapers and children’s and young people’s books are available in the library, partly managed by other departments.

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Special acquisitions and holdings