International issue
In my August issue I intimated that I would be devoting much less time to Devon and its bibliography in the future and two months in Berlin and Paris during which I visited several libraries, archives, museums and galleries have proved this to be true. My bibliographic travels have taken me across four continents and through four millennia.
Humboldt Forum
A striking newcomer to the scene opposite the Museumsinsel in Unter den Lindenn is the Berliner Schloss, a recreation of the Hohenzollern palace which was expanded according to plans by Andreas Schlüter between 1689 and 1713, which was considered a major work of Baroque architecture. Badly damaged during the war, it was razed to the ground by the East German authorities in 1950. In the early 1970s, a severely modernist parliamentary and cultural centre known as the Palace of the Republic was erected on the site, incongruously incorporating a single balcony from the Baroque building. There in 1973 I had witnessed demonstrations following the coup by Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet which toppled Allende's democratically elected left-wing Unidad Popular government. After German reunification in 1990 the Palace of the Republic was demolished in 2009 during which 5,000 tons of asbestos were discovered. From 2013 reconstruction of the original place was begun to house the Humboldt Forum Museum and work continued, combining both both historicist and modernist elements, and the last decorations were only installed early in 2025.
Asia ethnographic gallery
It is a massive complex with several museums and exhibitions and when I arrived admission was free to their extensive ethnographic collections and I hoped to find some exhibits in their collections on Asia to reflect my interest in early printing in the Far East. Paper had been invented in China, probably in the first century and in the first millennium rich written cultures had developed, especially along the silk road in Xingjian. Written documents in more than twenty languages had been found by archaeologists during German and British expeditions in the early 20th century. These included not only writings in the Sino-Tibetan language family (Chinese Tibetan, Tangut), but also in Indo-European (Sanskrit and the lost Tocharian A and B languages), Afro-Asiatic (Arabic, Aramaic), Mongolian and Turkic. Printing with woodblocks appeared in the ninth century, five hundred years before printing with woodblocks and moveable types in Europe in the fifteenth century. Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943) was involved in four major expeditions and most of his findings came to London but much also ended up in Berlin. Here are some of the items I found:
China, Xinjiang, Shorchuk, ca.900.
Udanavarga, a bilingual manuscript in Sanskrit and Tocharian A, both of them Indo-European languages written in a form of the Brahmi script used in India. It is a poetic guide to a contemplative life with Buddhist interpretations.
China, Xinjiang, Kocho, 900/1000.
This double page and fragment are from a codex book rather than a scroll and are written on paper with ink, colours and gold. The illumination shows hearers sitting on lotus flowers which grow out of a basin of water. The more important priests are shown above. It was discovered by a German expedition in 1902-3.
Xinjiang, Toyuk, 1200/1400
Mūkapaṅgu-avadāna
Also tables of language families in the Tarim Basin during the first millennium.
This fragment of a block print in Old Uyghur language belongs to a collection of block prints of Jākata and Avadāna Buddhist tales. The tale known as Mūkapaṅgu-avadāna is suggested by the scene of the prince in his coffin, the axes raised by the executioners and the nailing of the coffin. In this ghoulish tale the prince, who claims to be "dumb and numb" asks his father for permission to renounce worldly life when the king wants to bury him alive.
Xinjiang, Kocho,1200/1400. Mahaprajnparamita Sutra
This illuminated block print is written in the Tangut language, an extinct member of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It was the official language of the Western Xia dynasty (1038-1227), founded by the Tangut people in north-western China. They developed their own writing system based on Chinese script.
The Far East developed a number of book formats for presenting texts and images, including scrolls, codices, screenfolds and palm leaves threaded together at each end.
Japanese privately published coloured woodblock, Edo period 1810/1825
Ikeda Eisen (1790-1848) coloured print showing examples of calligraphy, c.1820
America ethnographic gallery
By the time I got round to visiting this gallery I found that charging had been introduced over the weekend. The staff seemed confused about the situation - apparently the decision had been hurriedly brought forward and I asked whether the annual Berlin card for all the state museums would be valid. They thought it would but it took some time to find out and direct me to a helpful staff member responsible for this. He took the photograph from my passport and the card was printed, but when I asked for the entrance fee to be refunded or deducted from the price he said that was not possible. So, if you plan to visit the numerous state museums in Berlin, arm yourself with an annual ticket when you set out.
I wanted to see the Maya exhibits as that culture was largely responsible for one of the three main independent origins of writing. The first was around 3500 BCE, probably in the area of the Fertile Crescent, and influenced the development of Egyptian hieroglyphs and the undeciphered Harappan script around 3100 BCE, and later from about 1800 BCE syllabic and alphabetic scripts. The second group of scripts developed in China during the Shang dynasty around 1500 BCE and the third developed in Mesoamerica with the Olmec civilisation around 900 BCE. China and America both went through similar stages of development, with syllabaries developing in Japan and with the Maya and an alphabet in Korea.
The table below gives the twenty day names common to all cultures in Mesoamerica.
Mesoamerica, day names
The twenty day names were combined with a repeating cycle of thirteen to produce a ritual calendar of 260 days. This, combined with the 360 day year resulted in a "binding of the years" every 52 years when the cycle was completed and a New Fire ceremony was held by the Aztecs. All fires were extinguished, a new fire was kindled in the heart of a male sacrificial victim and distributed to communities throughout the empire.
Mexico, Aztec, 1325/1521
Nahaul ollin (4-earthquake) calendar stone
Humboldt Forum IV Ca 3768
The Aztecs believed that on this day the current fifth world creation (the Fifth Sun) would be destroyed by an earthquake. The previous four creations were also destroyed by natural disasters.
Mesoamerican calendar system
This cyclical view of time was developed further by the Mayas in their long count dates which recorded the number of days that had elapsed since the mythical day zero of 13 August 3114 BCE in baktuns of 144,000 days (394 years), katuns of 7,200 days (20 years), tuns of 360 days, winals of 20 days and remaining individual days. Thus the 2025 AGM of the Friends of Devon's Archives in Tiverton on 15 November would be held on:
13.0.13.1.12 10 Eb'. 10 Keh.
13 B’aktun X 144,000 days = 1,872,000 days
0 K’atun X 7,200 days = 0 days
13 Tun X 360 days = 4,680 days
1 Winal X 20 days = 20 days
12 K’in X 1 day = 12 days
Tzolkin Date: 10 Eb'. Haab Date: 10 Keh. Lord of the Night: G.
Maya-Yaxchilan-754
This lintel from La Pasadita shows a bound prisoner Tul Ch'ik cowering between the king of Yaxchilan, Yaxun Balam (Bird Jaguar, who also bears the title He of the Thousand Prisoners) and his vassal and important ally Tilo'om. The capture took place on the day 9 Chuwen 6 Yaxk'in (9 June 759).
Maya-Calakmul-Kaan-736
Dynastic vase with a list of ten kings of the Kaan dynasty of Calakmul. The sentences contain a date, the verb designating a ritual for accession to the throne, the name of the king and the hieroglyph that designates him as divine ruler over Kaan. The dedication formula follows the list: "this is the drinking vessel for cocoa from the tree of abundance".
Maya-Peten-Yomootz-700/800
Plate with a dedication formula from Yomootz, Peten, Guatemala. The dedication reads: This is the inscribed plate of Taxinchan, first youth, the lakam (high official) of K'ahk' Yohl K'inich, ruler of Yomootz. (Humboldt Forum IV Ca 50512).
Maya, Guatemala, 600/900 Humboldt Forum IV Ca 46100
This painted clay cylindrical vessel from the Guatemala highlands bears made-up hieroglyphs which do not explain the scene depicted. The painters seem not to have been literate and were creating pottery for the common people. Literacy was well-regarded and scribes were of high status, often including kings who drew the texts to be sculpted on the stone stelae or lintels. Only recently have scholars begun to decipher Maya inscriptions, revealing a previously unknown story of cities, dynasties, conflicts and alliances often dated to the very day the events occurred.
Further north in Mexico among the Mixtecs, Aztecs and other Nahuatl speaking peoples inscriptions remained at a pictographic level, meaning that textual information was limited to names of people or places or day or year names. Nevertheless considerable amounts of information were able to be communicated, as these two examples from the colonial period, but drawing on native iconography, clearly show.
Humboldt Forum IV Ca 3010
This Colonial-Aztec document is a cadastral map of an unidentified Nahuatl community, probably prepared as part of a legal process following the sanguinary death of a woman named Chalchiuhnene. It is painted on a sheet of bark paper ('Amate') approximately 20 by 60 cm in size. For the large sheet of paper, two fragments from single-sided inscribed Christian hymnals "Ave maris stella" and "Kyrie eleison" were assembled. The question of how the first owner, Chiquatzin Tecuitli, head of an Aztec-speaking community, came into possession of the presumably monastic manuscript is unclear. Most of the names are given in Latin script with only one pictographic name. The style is typical of Aztec mapping, roadways being shown with footprints and property boundaries marked.
Mexico, Tlatzcantzin, 1600.
Humboldt Forum IV Ca 3014
This genealogical tree of the descendants of Tlatzcantzin, originating from the central highlands of Mexico, shows the use of pictographic names for the first generation. By the third generation only one has a pictographic name, a heart (yolotl). In the Latin gloss it is rendered Yoloteotl roughly translated as Divine Heart. This shows that the traditional method of record keeping remained alive for almost a century after the Spanish conquest.
We had to deposit our bags to visit the Berlin display and then found we had to go down to the foyer to buy tickets as the Berlin museums card did not cover that display. Finally they relented as the exhibition was not open for much longer. We soon discovered that it was not the display of archaeological sites and short historical video on the history of Berlin we were hoping for but something much larger on Berlin and the world since the war, picking up on the important issues across the years in an overdesigned confusing display which was fitted awkwardly into a series of rooms and connecting corridors. We imagined the series of brainstorming sessions that must have gone on to hide such a mass of interesting information in such a rabbit warren of a display.
We finally discovered the lift down to the castle cellars where our exhibition was housed on our way out of the Humboldt Centre. It was in fact quite well signposted; we had simply come in the wrong entrance.
Greeted by people dressed up as skeletons and discovered that we had visited for the celebration of the Mexican Fiesta de Día de Muertos, presumably tying in with Halloween.
Schloßkeller good showing in situ remains from medieval times to GDR days. Had also expected a video.
Directed to panorama styled history of site. Much information dispensed in a style that must have resulted from an idea hatched in one of the brainstorming sessions for the Berlin display that we had fleetingly visited on Monday. The panorama was far too wide to be completely seen from any position. The idea of enormous hands putting into place documents to illustrate the sources used for the history seemed good but soon degenerated into an annoying gimmick when they were gathered up and swept away before we had a chance to look at them, and they had no captions anyway to place them in context.
Kulturforum
After the Second World War and the subsequent partitioning of the city, most of the surviving museum collections found themselves in the Soviet-controlled sector. As a result, a plan emerged to forge a new cultural centre for West Berlin near Potsdamer Platz. The first major building was the Philharmonie concert hall, opened in 1963, followed by the Neue Nationalgalerie, opened in 1968 and extensively refurbished and modernised from 2015 until 2021. In 1985 the building for the Kunstgewerbemuseum was opened and this from 1994 also housed the Kupferstichkabinett. There is also a National Library here as well as in Unter den Linden. The Kulturforum since reunification is now in a peripheral location and poorly served by public transport. It is a complicated and outwardly uninspiring place, with vast empty open spaces, one corner holding a tree nursery, and much less frequented than the museums and galleries in what was previously Berlin Hauptstadt der DDR. Once inside I found it extremely difficult to find one's way around. I did find my way into the Kunstgewerbemuseum shortly before closing time. It is a massive museum of European arts and crafts from the Middle Ages to the present day and I thought that the Kupferstichkabinett might form part of it but staff on duty were unable to enlighten me.
Kupferstickkabinett
On my second attempt I did manage to locate the Kupferstichkabinett, having deposited my bags, and wandered through endless empty spaces with unhelpful signage, up and down stairways in an attempt to reach the right level and finally found it through an unprepossessing door by the café. There was an interesting small display on the tools and materials used to produce engravings, woodcuts and lithographs and a side gallery, much promoted, with the title "Yes to all" - an exhibition of about 200 prints from the 900 in the donation of Paul Maenz and Gerd de Vries beginning in the 1960s until the present, mainly of conceptual art and similar post-modernist nihilism. The example below with the title "Untitled" is part of a diptych in acrylic on banknotes by Hans-Peter Feldmann (1941-2003) which also includes a similarly decorated dollar bill. It must have cost the purchasers rather more than £10+$1.
Of the 110,000 drawings, watercolours and oil sketches, of the wealth of illustrated books, miniatures, printing plates, topographical views and 550.000 prints by masters such as Sandro Botticelli, Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt and Germans such as Chodowiecki nothing was to be seen, not even a display of facsimiles. It seemed shocking for one of the world's four largest collections of prints and drawings. I was shown into the research room where a very helpful custodian explained that all material had to be looked out in advance, so I asked for a selection of material of all kinds relating to Weimar between 1750 and 1830 and arranged a visit in two days time.
I realised that there would probably be more material in the Kunstbibliothek in the same complex, a library on the history of art, architecture, book arts, graphic art and crafts with a stock of 500,000 volumes, 20,000 electronic publications, 70,000 auction catalogues, 50,000 microforms and 1,500 current periodicals. There is also a historic collection of some 24,000 volumes. That really requires another visit next year, so I devoted what was left of the day to wandering through the magnificent Gemäldegalerie which is especially strong on the Italian masters such as Giotto, Titian and Canaletto, Dutch painters including Rembrandt und Pieter Breugel and German artists such as Albrecht Dürer. Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds were also well-represented but there were more staff than visitors when I was there.
When I finally visited the Kupferstichkabinett to see a selection of material relating to Weimar, the staff were very helpful and attentive, dashing across in case I damaged the items. Gloves were not required but I was required to sign to say that I would not publish any of the images. As the Weimar-Album is out of copyright I have used images from the Haithi Trust digitised version which has the full text, as does Google Books. There were only three researchers during the afternoon I was there and that in one of the world's four largest collections of its kind. It makes the Devon Heritage Centre seem a veritable honeypot! The following items are linked to my project to compare the world of the book in Weimar, Caen and Exeter in the late 18th century.
Items relating to Weimar produced by the Kupferstichkabinett
- included, like the stuff on the Maya and Chinese printing, as notes to myself.
1. Das Theater. - [1840?]. - Lithograph ; 92x131 mm. -
2. Schiller's Haus. - [1840?]. - Lithograph ; 93x140 mm. -
3. Das Schillerhaus / nach Photographie von C. Schaufuss ; gestochen von G. Brinckmann Leipzig ; Druck von Landes Industrie Comptoir. - Verlag von Voigt und Guenther , [1860?]. - Inv. Nr. 12274.
4. Pentazonium Vimariense. Monument auf die Regierungs- und Vermählung-Jubel-Feyer Sr Königl. Hoheit des Grossherzogs Carl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach und desses erlauchter Gemahlin Luis, geborene Landgräfin zu Hessen-Darmstadt im September und October 1825. - [Weimar] : [s.n.], [1825]. - Line engraving : text, arms, 2 elevations, 6 plans ; 570x426 mm. - Scale bar 100' : 71 mm. - Inv. nr: P 41 12.
5. Goethe, Johannn Wolfgang von. [Two folders of about 25 sketches in ink, pencil and wash]. Mainly 1809. Includes ZDA KD2:3988. Pencil sketch of crowd of spectators facing right, possibly for book illustration. Undated.
Weimar-Album, 1860. Title page
6a. Weimar-Album. Blätter der Erinnerung an Carl August und seinen Musenhof. Eine geschichtliche Schilderung von August Diezmann. Mit zweiundzwanzig in Stahl gestochenen Bildern. - Leipzig : Voigt & Günther, 1860. - Inv. Nr. KK Top 1875.
6b-c. Vorwort
6d. Verzeichniß der Abbildungen.
6e. Erstes Buch.
6f. Carl Alexander ; Sophie ; Anna Amalia ; Carl August ; Carl Friedrich ; Maria Paulowna / Druck und Verlag von Voigt & Guenther ; gestochen von Gustav Brinckmann Leipzig
6g. Das Schloss zu Weimar. / Photographirt von C. Schaufuss ; gestochen von Gustav Brinckmann Leipzig ; Druck und Verlag von Voigt & Guenther.
6h. Goethe's Gartenhau / R. Bauer gez. ; gestochen von G. Brinckmann Leipzig ; Druck und Verlag von Voigt & Guenther.
6i. Genio huius loci. / nach Photographie von C. Schaufuss ; gestochen von G. Brinckmann Leipzig ; Druck und Verlag von Voigt & Guenther.
Die Schillerbank. / nach Photographie von C. Schaufuss ; gestochen von G. Brinckmann Leipzig ; Druck und Verlag von Voigt & Guenther.
6j. Die Wieland Statue von Gaster / nach Photographie von Schaufuss gezeichnet von Toller ; gestochen von G. Brinckmann Leipzig ; Druck und Verlag von Voigt & Guenther.
Weimar-Album. Blätter der Erinnerung an Carl August und seinen Musenhof. Eine geschichtliche Schilderung von August Diezmann. Sr Königlichen Hoheit Carl August Großherzog von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach mit allergnädigster Erlaubniß gewidmet. Lieferung 1. - Leipzig : Voigt & Günther, 1860. - Bookseller's label: Richter'sche Buchhandlung in Zwickau.
The following note to the bookbinder gives interesting background on the circumstances of this book's publication:
Notiz für den Buchbinder!Für das Einfügen der Stahlstiche ist von uns nachstehende Reihenfolge bestimmt worden. Das Blatt mit den Portraits des Weimarischen Fürstenhauses kommt als Titelbild zwischen Schmutz- und Haupttitel links, also dem letzterm gegenüber, zu stehen. Dann folgen: Das Schloss zu Weimar. - Goethe's Büste. - Goethe's Gartenhaus. - Das Herder-Haus und Das Wieland-Haus. - Das Borkenhäuschen. - Die Sternbrücke. -☛ Wir liefern Einbanddecken für beide Ausgaben in Callico mit reicher Vergoldung und besonders dazu angefertigten Stempelnfür die Gewöhnliche Ausgabe zu dem Preise von - Thlr. 20 Ngr.für die Feine Ausgabe zu dem Preise von 1 Thlr. - Ngr.Leipzig. Voigt & Günther
Neue Nationalgalerie
Here I was delighted to discover at last "Hermès (Bag)" an iconic work of art in felt by Mombasa-born Cosima von Bonin that in 2000 had been inspired by my very own handbag.
Unfortunately the rest of the collections of twentieth-century art in a divided Germany did not live up to this initial transcendant encounter. Many movements were introduced, some far too way-out for this blinkered old bibliofool, with sound and video installations galore. The displays on feminism seemed particularly dated. What does wandering starkers round a corn field with a tall column strapped to your head say about anything? But even the reaction "Well if that's art, then I'm an artist" is catered for.
By standing on the positions on the floor and perceiving the new spatial juxtapositions of objects in the gallery we are apparently creating our own artworks. Nevertheless, despite realising that I was a budding conceptual artist, I was most disappointed in finding only two examples of socialist realism in the galleries - is it the new entartete Kunst?
James Simon Galerie.
Die Bronzen von San Casciano dei Bagni: eine Sensation aus dem Schlamm
The James Simon Gallery was opened in 2019 in a modern building by David Chipperfield Architects next to the Neues Museum as a visitor centre for all the state museums of Berlin. I visited to see a special exhibition of the bronzes of San Casciano which had been recovered in a remarkable state of preservation from the mud of the sacred thermal springs of the Etruscan town of Clusium between 2022 and 2024. Shown together with other relics found there and in other Etruscan sites they shed new light on devotional practices with inscriptions not only in Latin but also in Etruscan.
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Etruria, Location 82. Gateway plaque 4
This terra-cotta plaque from the gateway to a shrine bears the Etruscan inscription "Thema veinei crepesa numsis". Although using an alphabet derived from the Greek and similar to Latin the language is largely undeciphered and no affinity with the Indo-European language family has been established. It is good to have this intriguing example from the world's earliest group of scripts, using letters derived from the Greek alphabet.
Etruria, Balnea Clusina, 100 BCE
This male portrait head in bronze with a dedication in Etruscan on the neck to Flere Havens (Goddess of the Spring) is typical of others found in the mud of the sacred spring.
Deutsches Historisches Museum Bibliothek
On 24 October 2025 it was the national Tag der Bibliotheken in Germany I booked in for talks and tours in the library of the Deutsches Historisches Museum located in the Museumsinsel beside the Zeughaus, originally the Prussian arsenal building, which now houses the Museum. The address is, appropriately, Hinter dem Gießhaus 3 (behind the Foundry). The talks were a double act by Klaudia Charlotte Lenz and Mattias Miller who in the first talk outlined the complex history of the library, founded as the Zeughausbibliothek in 1822. The library reading room and administration is in what was from 1896 to 1945 the Prussian Central bank and on a tour of the stacks we learned about the hoists used for moving the heavy gold ingots which used to be stored in the bank vaults. After 1945 the building was used by the GDR Foreign Ministry and for a while was the headquarters of VEB Minol, the state petroleum company, before being transferred to the Museum around the time of the Wende in 1989.
Bibliophily: travel souvenirs
There was also a talk on book collecting with a display of examples of collectibles including the first edition of Im Westen nichts Neues (All quiet on the Western Front), the famous 1928 war novel by Erich Maria Remarque. I checked up to see whether my copy was a first edition it was an impression of 176-200 thousand, issued in 1929; the cover though is identical.
Bibliophily: translations and first editions
Later in the day there was a talk on the history of the book, considering the writing materials, scripts, and technological processes involved, from clay tablets through papyrus scrolls to bound manuscripts on parchment to paper and print and digital media. As librarians they spoke about the evolution of the title page and the problems this posed for identifying and cataloguing a text. In some respects in recent times the situation had reverted to the time of the incunabula with much information on the verso of the title or even the back of the book. Copies of early items were handed round among them a particularly fine example:
Berlin, Haude und Spener, 1778
Johann Reinhold Forster's [...] Reise um die Welt während den Jahren 1772 bis 1775 in dem von Seiner itztregierenden Großbrittannischen Majestät auf Entdeckungen ausgeschickten und durch den Capitain Cook geführten Schiffe the Resolution unternommen / beschrieben und herausgegeben von dessen Sohn und Reisegefährten George Forster. [...] Vom Verfasser selbst aus dem Englischen übersetzt, mit dem Wesentlichsten aus des Capitain Cooks Tagebüchern und andern Zusätzen für den deutschen Leser vermehrt und durch Kupfer erläutert. Erster Band. Mit allergnädigsten Freyheiten.
The author Georg Forster (1754-1794) was the subject of my friend Hubert's doctoral thesis at the Karl-Marx-University in 1989 and this account of his journey round the world with his father Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798) pops up again in the display in the historical division of the Staatsbibliothek this afternoon.
Staatsbibliothek, Unter den Linden
Staatsbibliothek, Unter den Linden, Berlin
Like the British Library, there is an exhibition of its treasures. Another item relating to Johann Reinhold Forster caught my eye:
IVth continuation of a journal of a voyage on board his Majesties ship Resolution Capt. Cook commander from the arrival in Otahaitee April ye 22d 1774 to the departure from Nallicoolo Sept. ye 1st 1774 / Johann Reinhold Forster.
Journal IIIrd continuation 15 March 1774 / Johann Reinhold Forster
Johann Reinhold Forster recorded the monumental basalt sculptures of Easter Island in a sketch and was the first European to investigate the names of these Moai. He writes:
These pillars intimate that these natives were formerly a more powerful people, more numerous & better civilized; & they are the only monuments of their former grandeur. These pillars all have names, & the whole range of pillars near the sea is commonly called a Hanga & they add allways a peculiar name to it, to particularise or distinguish the monument & division of the country. The pillars & walls near the anchoring & watering places are called Hanga-roa [Wide Bay] Kotomoal, Kotomeeree, Koohoo-oo, Morahseena, Oomreeva, Ooeen-aboo, Ooenapa.
Another gem unearthed in my quest for examples of early Asian printing is this example from Tibet:
Tibet, Year of the Iron Tiger [1475/1550]?
vPhags-pa-shes-rab kyi pha-roi tu phyin-pa brgyad-stong-pa (The holy prefection of wisdom in eight thousand lines) ascribed to Rin-chen Chos-skyong-bzang-po (1441-1527) is Buddhist sutra detailing practices for attaining nirvana. It is a block print with a beautifully illuminated protective cover.
Berlin's main public library
The Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin, a massive modern building in Breite strasse 30-36. With more than 3,800,000 books and other media and 1,250,000 visits a year it is the largest public library in Germany.
Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin, main reading room
Bookinista on the Fasanenplatz which had a café bar, chairs and tables to browse books. Her appointment lasted long enough to tempt me into purchasing a volume to add to my collection of Insel-Bücherei volumes with their distinctive covers (and interesting cntents):
Bookinista, Buchkultur am Fasanenplatz, Berlin
Charité hospital, Berlin
Complying with an order of King Frederick I of Prussia, the hospital was established north of the Berlin city walls in 1710 in anticipation of an outbreak of the bubonic plague. After the plague failed to materialise in Berlin, it came to be used as a charity hospital for the poor and in 1727 King Frederick William I of Prussia gave it the name "Charité". The construction of an anatomical theatre in 1713 marked the beginning of the medical school. The University of Berlin (today Humboldt University) was founded in 1810 and the dean of the medical college Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland integrated the Charité as a teaching hospital in 1828. It has become Europe's largest university hospital, affiliated with Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. The complex is spread over four campuses and comprises around 3,000 beds, 15,500 staff, 8,000 students, and more than 60 operating theatres.
Sieglinde worked in the Campus Virchow Klinikum in Wedding, which grew out of the Institut für Pathologie, involved in seeing funding for research projects and it was there that she met her husband Jurgen who worked in the IT section. She was keen that I saw the museum of the institution she worked for and so was I, since Jill had worked in Exeter Medical Library and came into contact with researchers there.
Wedding campus of the Charité Hospital, Berlin
Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité owes its origin to Rudolf Virchow – internationally known as "the father of modern pathology". He opened the Pathological Museum as part of the Charité in 1899 and made many of the exhibits in the collection himself. It re-opened in June 2023 in the heart of Berlin on the main Charité campus. It has a large space for temporary exhibitions on the first floor and the permanent exhibition on the second and third floors with the anatomical and pathological sections on the second floor and a display of equipment, including a massive iron lung, a birthing chair and a number of case studies. Through a window here we could see the ruin of the former Rudolf Virchow Lecture Hall.
Rudolf Virchow Lecture Hall, Medical History Museum, Berlin
With the lecture hall ruin of the former Rudolf Virchow Lecture Hall, the Berlin Medical History Museum owns a breathtaking unique venue that has already provided an unforgettable experience for many guests from all over the world. The lecture hall in the former Pathological Museum was destroyed by aerial bombing at the end of World War II. In the post-war years, it was provisionally restored and almost forgotten. Since the mid-1990s, the "preserved" lecture hall ruin has been a venue for festive events, social gatherings and scientific exchange.
Palais-Royal Paris
I discovered a part of Paris new to me, a block away from the rue Sainte Anne where the family were lodged for a reunion.
The Palais-Royal, whose construction began in the 1640s, became the Paris seat of the Dukes of Orleans, closely linked to the monarchy, and by the 18th century had become one of the leading social centres of Paris, with art collections, theatres, galleries of shops and gardens in the centre of a massive cour d'honneur all open to te public and, being a royal domain, an area that the police could not enter. At times it became notorious as a centre of debauchery and a place where prostitutes roamed, but the coffee shops were centres for the meetings of enlightened minds, and philosophical, scientific, literary and political discussion were held there. It was a place for free and open discussion, and publications circulated there which would not always meet with official approval. This was particularly true in the time of Louis-Philippe II, Duke of Orleans, cousin of Louis XVI.
Bibliothèque nationale de France.
I had previously only visited the site Francois-Mitterand and the site Arsenal so was unaware of what remained in its original location, now the site Richelieu, accessed from the rue Vivienne, just a block away from the Palais-Royal. The construction of the complex of buildings was started in the 17th century as the palace of Cardinal Mazarin. The royal library moved there in 1721, forming the nucleus of what became the Bibliothèque nationale. Approached through the Jardin Vivienne it now houses the Department of Prints and Photographs et the Department of Maps and Plans. There is also the Salle Ovale, a reading room constructed between 1897 and 1936, reopened in 2022 as a reading room freely accessible to all without charge, containing an open access stock of 20,000 volumes, the collections of the Institut national de l'histoire d'art and the Ecole nationale des chartes. There is also the museum of the BnF with its splendid collections of Greek vases, coin, jeweller and other objects dating from the time when libraries were also cabinets of curiosities.
Apart from the heritage collections, there is always a changing series of special exhibitions in a range of galleries. It was to one of these that I was recommended by a Proust enthusiast in Exeter shorlty before I left for Berlin.
Impressions nabies: Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis, Vallotton
The Nabies were a group of printmakers who included Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), Édouard Vuillard (1868-1940), Maurice Denis (1870-1943) and Félix Vallotton (1865-1925). Their name is taken from the Hebrew word for prophet. They aimed at integrating their art into everyday life and beside individual prints they produced book illustrations, contributed to periodicals and reviews, printed posters and produced designs for fans, screens and wallpapers. They mainly used lithography, often coloured, but some woodcuts were also displayed. They were active as a group for little more than a decade in the 1890s and were influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain. Many of them espoused socialist views but, like William Morris and the Kelmscott Press, they ended up by producing many items that were beyond the financial reach of ordinary people. Many of the prints were published by Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) one of the leading art dealers in Paris who set up his gallery in 1893. He was also an avid art collector and publisher, especially of print series by leading artists, issued as livres d'artiste in limited editions for collectors.
The exhibition was well displayed and well explained with many panels in English as well as French. Of the 200 items I only took a couple of photographs.
Paris : H.Julien, 1892
This book cover by Pierre Bonnard was produced for Reine de joie, moeurs du demi-monde : la ménagerie sociale by Victor Joze (1861-1933). This controversial novel about a Parisian courtesan is best known for the poster by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The work advertised as being in preparation, Unter den Linden was published in 1894 as Babylone d'Allemagne, mœurs berlinoises also by Victor Joze. I photographed it because of the link back to Berlin.
Paris : Pierre Bonnard, 1897
Pierre Bonnard's coloured lithograph was for a review which appeared from March 1897 to December 1899, covering prints, posters, collections and exhibitions which had recently appeared both in France and abroad.
The Nabies were mentioned by Marcel Proust in his essay Sur la lecture, originally written as a preface to his translation of John Ruskin's Sesame and lilies (Sésame et les Lys) was first published in 1905 as an article in the review La Renaissance Latine. He writes in his typically convoluted style with its interminable sentences on artists and writers seeking to make their work more immediately accessible to the public while they themselves take their inspiration from more classic sources:
Le public va aux expositions de M. Vuillard et de M. Maurice Denis cependant que ceux-ci vont au Louvre. Cela tient sans doute à ce que cette pensée contemporaine que les écrivains et les artistes originaux rendent accessible et désirable au public, fait dans une certaine mesure tellement partie d’eux-mêmes qu’une pensée différente les divertit mieux. Elle leur demande, pour qu’ils aillent à elle, plus d’effort, et leur donne aussi plus de plaisir ; on aime toujours un peu à sortir de soi, à voyager, quand on lit.
The public goes to the exhibitions of Mr. Vuillard and Mr. Maurice Denis, while the artists themselves go to the Louvre. This is undoubtedly because the contemporary idea that original writers and artists make accessible and desirable to the public is, to some extent, so much a part of them that a different thought entertains them more. It requires more effort from them to engage with it, and it also gives them greater pleasure; one always enjoys stepping outside oneself a little, exploring when reading.
Europes en partage
This exhibition drew together 150 items from the BnF's rich collections of books and other artefacts that reflected a range of themes that linked France to other nations of Europe. Among the themes selected were illuminated manuscripts, especially the international gothic and renaissance, Europe discovering the world, the Netherlands golden age, enlightenment Europe, romantic Europe, social problems in the 19th century, the golden age of the poster, plants and gardens, Marie Curie, feminist movements and the wars of the twentieth century.
Paris, 1372. John of Salisbury,
Policratique. Translated into French by Denis Foulechat BnF Ms fr. 24297.
Charles V financed the first French translations of the important latin texts of antiquity and the middle ages including Policraticus, a treatise on moral and political philosophy by the Westcountryman John of Salisbury (1115?-1180?) who composed this work around 1159. A copy of the Latin text which was once in Exeter Cathedral Library is now in the Bodleian Library (Bodley ms. 315). In the 1506 inventory it was listed in the 8th desk of the library in the north cloister as "politicus Iohannis Sarisburiensis, 2 fo. deus enim". It is also listed in a bequest of books by John Stevens, 20 June 1457. The Policraticus is the third of four items in the volume. An interesting link with Exeter as John of Salis bury was canon-treasurer of the Cathedral in the 1170s and had extensive correspondence with bishop Bartholomew.
Galerie and Passage Colbert constructed 1823 and recently restored.
