Peter Sodann Library

I have been in touch with the founding association of the "Peter Sodann Library", because I believe this is an important and worthy project. So, I recently translated the concept for the "Association for the Support, Preservation and Expansion of a Collection of Literature published in the East of Germany between 1945 and 1990 (Peter Sodann Library)” for broader distribution and can provide interested people with a PDF of the German and/or English version. The association can use all the support and help it can get. In particular, they are still looking for a place to house the collection of (currently) 200,000 books - at the moment, they are stored in cardboard boxes in an unused school gym in Merseburg (see photo). I also opened a facebook group called "The Friends of the Peter Sodann Library". If you would like to become a member of the association, provide other assistance, or donate books and/or money, please contact me or Eberhard Richter, head of the association's board.

The association and library see their role in providing access to the public and interested scholars to, at least, a basic inventory of 300,000 books published in the former GDR, and thus guarantee a continued open and critical debate regarding the culture of East Germany and its legacy. The time post-1990 experienced -- despite the agreements in the German Unification Treaty -- a systematic liquidation of the "Literary Nation GDR". Of 78 publishing houses and 17,000 libraries only a small fraction survived and their book inventories ended up mostly in landfills, while many authors were -- often unjustifiably so -- defamed. Germany has a complicated history with books, to say the least, and we should start to learn from that history.

(Photo: © Punctum/Alexander Schmidt)