Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation

• is one of the most important libraries worldwide,
• was founded in 1661,
• is jointly financed by the federal and state governments and belongs to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation,
• collects scientifically relevant literature from all languages, all time periods and all countries of the world (focusing on humanities and social sciences),
• has a large general collection of over 11 million books, which increases by about 100.000 items each year,
• has extensive special collections of national and world cultural heritage (see “Collections”), including:
  • 66.700 music autographs (including 80% of all music autographs by J.S. Bach, the world’s largest Mozart collection, the scores of Beethoven’s famous symphonies No. 4, 5, 8 and 9 – the latter is part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World Programme),
  • 42.170 oriental manuscripts, including the largest Hebrew parchment Bible and the largest Torah scroll,
  • 18.500 western manuscripts, including three of the nine fully preserved manuscripts of the Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs),
  • 321.000 autographs (e.g. Lessing, Goethe, Kleist),
  • more than 1.600 estates and personal papers (e.g. Herder, Eichendorff, Hauptmann, Bonhoeffer, Gründgens, Furtwängler),
  • the archive of the Mendelssohn family,
  • about 4.600 incunabula, including one of the first books printed with movable type, the Gutenberg Bible of 1454/55, a brilliantly illuminated, two volume parchment edition,
  • more than 200.000 rare prints (e.g. early Ming period prints; the oldest print in the world, Buddhist Spells from Japan 764/770),
  • an exquisite collection of historical book covers,
  • 1.1 million maps, atlases and globes, including the world’s largest bound atlas,
• is constantly expanding its digital library with its digitised collections, electronic journals, extensive databases, hundreds of thousands of e-book licenses etc.,
• is a centre of national and international literature supply, thanks to the worldwide acclaimed quality of its collections,
• has representatives in numerous national and international expert committees and thus actively contributes to the development of libraries,
• provides extensive national services, responsible for the national records of journals, autographs, estates and personal papers, incunabula, cartographic literature,
• provides access to several reading rooms in its two large listed buildings (cultural heritage) in the centre of Berlin:
  • Haus Unter den Linden 8, 10117 Berlin,
  • Haus Potsdamer Straße 33, 10785 Berlin,
• has an additional reading room for two special departments (Newspaper Department and Children’s and Young People’s Book Department) - temporarily located in Westhafen,
• operates an off-site storage facility in Friedrichshagen,
• is open from Monday to Saturday, 69 hours/week,
• the library's services are available to any person over 16 years of age.