Old prints

In the night of September 9-10, 1941, the State Library lost more than 90% of its extensive holdings of Hessian newspapers, books, maps, as well as incunabula and historical prints in a devastating firebombing raid on Kassel.

However, parts of the card catalog and the old handwritten volume catalogs were saved, which provided a valuable basis for the reconstruction of the holdings.

In contrast to the prints, the manuscripts and historical musical materials of the state library, as well as parts of the Kassel Grimm collection, had suffered little damage, as they had been located in a tower adjacent to the library building in 1941, which had escaped the fire.

Only a few months after the destruction, the State Library, supported by a donation of 200,000 Reichsmarks from the Führer, began to rebuild its book collection.

From 1942 until well into the post-war period, the rebuilding of the Hassiaca holdings was purposefully accelerated. Through gifts, donations from authorities, from court and school libraries, as well as through purchases, numerous prints from the 16th - 18th centuries, among others, came to the library during this time.

Together with those valuable prints and newspapers from the old state library that could be saved after the fire, they now form the core of the library's own valuable historical print holdings.

It is possible to use historical prints from the Fürstlich Waldecksche Hofbibliothek (FWHB) in Bad Arolsen itself or in Kassel. These can be ordered via the internal loan system for reference use in the reading room of the special collections in Kassel.

The holdings of the Court Library mainly comprise 17th/18th century prints from the fields of geography, history, literature and militaria and are fully recorded in KARLA.

In addition to its own holdings and those from the FWHB Arolsen, the State Library has other rare and valuable prints from various historical libraries. Over the past decades, they have been incorporated into the university library's old holdings as permanent loans.