evacuate by and by all holdings of the library to surrounding estates, coal mines, etc. outside of Berlin. What began as a well-controlled procedure with detailed packing lists and evacuation registers soon [...] the library but packed in crates and distributed among 30 evacuation places to the East and West of Berlin. In 1943, the East Asia Collection of the former Prussian State Library comprised about 72,000 volumes [...] Western world. As early as towards the end of the 17th century, the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg (1620-1688) had acquired the first Chinese titles for his library which he had opened also to scholars

Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin has a long history. As early as 1683, the first catalogue of Chinese titles, containing 25 entries, was printed for the Elector Friedrich Wilhelm von Brandenburg (1620-1688) (cf [...] collection had already been pointed out by Julius Klaproth (1783-1835). Klaproth was the author of the Berlin China-Catalogue, published in print in 1822. Today, out of the nearly 70,000 Chinese and Manchurian [...] which had been relocated due to the war, only about one third is still in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. A new and renewed inventory has been built up since 1951 with the support of the German Research

had to be relocated due to the war, was not returned to Berlin. Only 24,000 items found their way back to the Oriental Department of the East Berlin Staatsbibliothek (since 1969: Asia-Africa-Department) [...] Today, about one third of the former collection is in Berlin while the rest is destroyed or considered lost. Both departments in East and West Berlin developed quite differently until 1991, shortly after [...] in Kiel . Cooperation with other Departments of the State Library in Berlin The East Asia Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin maintains a working cooperation with other departments in the area of