catalogues, one in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in Berlin (East), and one in the Oriental Institute of the university of Giessen. The latter was transferred to the Oriental Department of the Staatsbibliothek [...] traditional German university, often have good and fairly large libraries, which are supported by the holdings of the university library. The institute libraries nowadays are no longer independent, as they [...] split off at a slightly later date. The first director of the Oriental Department was Gotthold Weil, who after his emigration in the early thirties to Israel was to become the first director of the Jewish