Birmingham, Washington, Weimar: Three Libraries, three jubilees, three fires

• Christa Jansohn

Libraries, jubilees and fires seem strange bedfellows, yet this trio has seemed to stick together ever since the burning of the library of Alexandria. The loss of books as our rich cultural archives of knowledge and memory will then be lamented by nearly everyone, and at the same time the how and why of this loss will often remain a mystery, not always for lack of suspects but from an excess of them. With the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C. and the Birmingham Shakespeare Library now held in the “Arts, Languages and Literature Section” of Birmingham Central Library the facts about the opening, rsp. their jubilees, and both their fires are astonishingly easy to put together, whereas the history of the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, its fire and its losses are more complex and therefore more difficult to reconstruct and to comprehend.

Seiten 102 - 105

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