Hartmut Walravens
Berlin State Library
The Manchurica of the Former Prussian State Library—An Example of German Reunification
35th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, 1992
Manchu books formed already part of the earliest holdings of the Library of the Great Elector of Prussia, which later became the Royal, and then the Prussian State Library. It was added upon during the next century, and the published catalogue by Julius Klaproth (Paris 1822) and its sequel by Wilhelm Schott (1840) prove its considerable size. In the early 20th century Hermann Hülle, the librarian, reported on further important acquisitions, and when Walter Fuchs published his catalogue of the Chinese and Manchu books in German collections, a large part of the material became easily accessible. The old Berlin Manchu collection, however, was split: One part of it belonged to the State Library in West Berlin, another part to the State Library in East Berlin, again another part seemed to be lost. An investigation of the consignments sent to different depositories during WW II shows that only few Manchu items of the old collection are probably lost-quite a number of the supposedly lost) books were found in Poland.
The paper gives a brief history of the collection and its catalogues and describes the problems of tracking down missing titles and the eventual re-cataloguing of the Berlin Manchurica which rank among the major Western holdings.