Press release: 13.12.2018

Historic publisher’s catalogues from the holdings of the German Museum of Books and Writing have been cleaned with funds provided by Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media Monika Grütters. This means that the advertising and sales catalogues from the library of the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels [German Publishers and Booksellers Association] are once again available for use.

The collection comprises around 30,000 publisher's directories, mostly in German and dating from the end of the 18th century to 1945. As advertising and sales catalogues, and consequently as expendables, publisher's directories do not belong in libraries or in archives of classic materials. Only extensive catalogues such as those published to commemorate anniversaries found their way into libraries. However, the brochures from smaller or short-lived publishing companies kept at the German National Library’s German Museum of Books and Writing in Leipzig are particularly valuable parts of this unique collection and emphasise the Museum’s unique position as the centre of book trade history in Germany. These directories afford an insight into publishers’ programmes and how they have changed, provide information on book prices and types of binding, trace the history of the publishing companies, make it possible to reconstruct the biographies of books and their provenances, and testify to changes in advertising strategies and reader behaviour.

As a unique directory, the catalogue collection ranks among the best in Europe of this genre. It is vitally important, not only in literary terms, but also in terms of media, art, music, cultural studies, historiography, German studies and provenance research. The Börsenverein’s collection of publisher’s catalogues had been harmed by microbes as the result of long-standing damage and was therefore practically unusable.

Background

For over a century now the German National Library has been collecting, documenting, archiving and making publicly available all written publications and sound recordings issued in Germany, or in German, since 1913. It provides its comprehensive range of services at its twin sites in Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main, but also in digital form to a global circle of users. In addition the German National Library also houses valuable and extensive special collections in the German Exile Archive 1933-1945 and the German Museum of Books and Writing.

As a member of the “Allianz Schriftliches Kulturgut Erhalten” [Alliance for the Preservation of Written Cultural Heritage], the German National Library pursues the goal of safeguarding the endangered original works in Germany's rich cultural and scientific heritage and anchoring this in public awareness as a nationwide task. The German National Library relies on preventive preservation in order to preserve the media in its collection in the long term and make it available to the general public.

Contact in the preservation department
Stephanie Preuss

Contact at the German Museum of Books and Writing
Dr. Stephanie Jacobs