Former German State Library

(Local Name: Deutsches Staatbibliothek) The first "Electoral Library at Cölln on the River Spree" was housed from 1661 in the Apothecaries' Wing (as it was known) of the Berlin Palace. In 1780 it was moved to the Old Library, popularly known as the "Chest of Drawers" (Kommode). Where the present library now stands was, until 1902, the site of the old royal stables built between 1687-1700 by Johann Arnold Hering and Martin Grünberg, and contained the Academy of Science and the Academy of Arts. In its Red Hall Johann Gottlieb Fichte gave his famous "Addresses to the German Nation" between 1807-08. Built between 1903-14 to plans by Ernst von Ihnen in the Neo-baroque style, this library was originally known as the Royal Library, but renamed Prussian State Library after the end of the First World War, a name it kept until 1945 when the East Germans changed it to German State Library. In 1939 the library boasted some 3,820,000 volumes. During the Second World War they were evacuated to more than 30 places throughout Germany. Today the collection has grown to more than six million books and 600,000 manuscripts, maps and incunabula. Twelve reading rooms, 430 desks and 130,000 volumes in a reference library are available to the public.