Town Council Library

Lüneburg: Town Council Library (Ratsbücherei)

The Ratsbücherei of Lüneburg is over 600 years old, which
makes it one of Germany's oldest municipal libraries. It was originally founded
with the name ‘des rades liberie’ (the council library), and located in the town hall. It was amalgamated with the library of the Franciscan Monastery when
their Lüneburg monastery was dissolved in 1555 and housed in the former
monastery building.

The library’s fiction section and lending area can be found on the
ground floor, in a well-preserved gothic hall with cross vaulting. The remains
of the cloisters can be glimpsed through a door of armoured glass - this is
where manuscripts and incunables are stored. 

The children and young people’s section is housed in the former living
quarters of the parsons’ widows in the monastery courtyard, the ‘Klosterhof’.
Parts of this complex also date from the time of the monastery.

For centuries, the library collected works from other libraries in the town.
It was also able to increase its stock with gifts from Lüneburg's patricians,
doctors and pharmacists. Today, the Ratsbücherei Lüneburg owns
796 manuscripts, 1131 incunables and about 20,000 prints from the 16th to 18th
centuries. Approximately 15,000 volumes date from the 19th century. The
Lüneburg legal manuscripts are among its most important documents, for example the
Sachsenspiegel [survey of Saxon law] (from around 1410 or 1445) and the
Schwabenspiegel [legal code of non-Saxon laws] (from around 1410). 

In combination with the young people’s library ‘In the Klosterhof’ and
the library in the Kaltenmoor school complex, the Ratsbücherei now contains approximately
190,000 items.

Text: Rolf Müller