Libraries of the world: Saxon State Library

This is the main reading room in the Saxon state library. The room is underground and the clear roof is at grass level.

The Saxon State Library (Sächsische Landesbibliothek) in Dresden is the Staatsbibliothek of Saxony and the academic library of the Technische Universität Dresden. It is one of the main public archival centers of Germany. Its treasures,collected over four centuries, were located in the Japanisches Palais and in temporary archives for a long period of time. Since 2002 it is located in a new building merged to the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und-Universitätsbibliothek Dresden.

From 1485, the city of Dresden was the seat of the Wettin dukes of Saxony, who from 1547 were prince-electors. The library was founded in 1556, when Prince-Elector Augustus (ruled 1553-1586) started systematically to acquire learned books and literary works. The prince himself inspected the lists of books offered at the book fair in Leipzig, the largest and most important city in his state, whose library had received the contents of the religious houses dissolved at the Reformation. Further, he instructed his diplomats to buy rare and precious books abroad. During the first half of the eighteenth century, under two rulers, Augustus the Strong (ruled 1694-1733) and his son, Augustus II (ruled 1733-1763), Dresden became a major European cultural center. The Court Library became a true state library for Saxony, absorbing many manuscripts, maps, and books from distinguished private collections, with some spectacular purchases, such as the Mayan codex (purchased 1736). In 1727, the Library moved into two wings of the Zwinger Palace. When Frederick the Great of Prussia bombarded Dresden in 1760, some of the library burned: there are singed volumes in the collection to this day. By the end of the eighteenth century it had outgrown its wing of the Zwinger, and it then moved to the Japanese Palace. In 1788 the Saxon Library was opened to the public. Following the proclamation of the Weimar Republic in 1919, it officially became the Saxon State Library, with its strengths continuing to lie in the arts, humanities, social sciences, literature and linguistics.

With the onset of World War II, the most precious holdings of the State Library were dispersed to eighteen castles and offices apart from any possible military objectives. Consequently, they largely survived the bombing raids of February and March 1945 by the British and American Air Forces, which destroyed the former library buildings and virtually the whole historic center of Dresden. The bombing caused losses of about 200,000 volumes of twentieth-century manuscript and printed holdings and also some irreplaceable musical manuscripts, including the major corpusof Tomaso Albinoni's unpublished music, though Georg Philipp Telemann's manuscripts were preserved (catalogued, 1983). After the war, some 250,000 books were taken to Russia. A merger with the University Library of the Technische Universität Dresden in 1996 spurred the development of new permanent structures to house the combined libraries,which had been scattered among almost three dozen locations throughout the city. The move to the new stone-clad facilities designed by Ortner & Ortner was completed in 2002. With more than 7 million pieces the fused library is one of the biggest libraries in Europe. The library hosts the Deutsche Fotothek.