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Important collection of literature for children and young adults
The Children’s and Young People‘s Book Department
Hans Baltzer: Original illustration of Gulliver’s Travels, Berlin, 1957. SBB-PK © Hans Baltzer
In 1951, a special scientific department for children and young people‘s media was founded in the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in East Berlin. The collections now comprise historical and modern children and young people’s books from all over the world, journals as well as research literature. A special focus is on the collection of old German children’s books, which ranks among the most comprehensive and important of its kind in Europe. In addition to that, the department collects pictorial broadsheets, posters, and original materials related to children’s and youth books, such as manuscripts and illustrations. In this way, representative examples illustrate the way from idea to finished book.
Even in our century, libraries have never considered children’s and young adult books to be collectable items. Children’s books, donated or taken under obligation, were rarely catalogued and more often than not were resold by libraries at auction. Disregarding this extensive literary genre has resulted in a lack of source material.
With the establishment of the special department of literature for children and young adults in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, this long-neglected literary genre has finally received the recognition it deserves and has secured a permanent position for this collection in the library. In 1978, the department started to systematically collect original illustrations made for children’s and young adult books. In addition, broadsheets as well as posters about books for children and young adults were collected.
When the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek and the Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz merged in 1992, the Children’s and Young People‘s Book Department was kept as an independent special collection. In this respect, the special collection of books for children and young adults has become an important source for academic research.
The historical collection contains children’s books from five different centuries. Books on behaviour and conduct were among the first types of volumes printed for children, such as Erasmus von Rotterdam’s De civilitate morum puerilium libellus (1537), ABC books, with which you learn how to read and write, books of fables, and religious guides for children. Fairy tales, stories, collections of rhymes, and non-fiction books are available in abundance.
Among the department’s most prized objects are the first edition of Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz, early Struwwelpeter editions (2nd edition 1846), and adaptions of the Struwwelpeter books. In addition, there are many illustrated books by renowned artists, such as Ivan Bilibin, Walter Crane, Ernst Kreidolf, Ludwig Richter, and Walter Trier.
Ivan Bilibin: Skazka o care Saltane, St. Petersburg, 1905. SBB-PK. Public Domain Mark 1.0
