1907: Countering the poison of trashy literature with ennobling entertainment

Offenbach was a pioneer in this respect. The topic was in the air. The establishment of public libraries is one of the phenomena that illustrate the 19th century as an era of emancipatory endeavors. The workers' movement sought to open up access to "bourgeois" culture through reading circles and libraries.

Bourgeois circles also founded them to ward off socialist heresies. In this way, church organizations sought to build dams against filth and immorality. It was not until the end of the century that this led to the desire for a politically neutral public library system, as the Anglo-Saxons already knew it.

The aim was nothing less than to move from a welfare institution for the little man to a source of education for all classes. But only the local authorities could achieve this. "Create bookstores!" demanded an appeal to the magistrates of German cities in 1899. In Offenbach, the "Committee for Lectures for the People and Related Endeavors", founded in 1898, took up the cause.

However, this committee had to do a lot of convincing. The requested start-up aid of 500 marks was only approved by the city council by a majority of one vote. The opponents thought that half would be enough. However, the town was now more open-minded than it had been in 1845, when Justice Thomas offered his private library as the basis for a town library. The city considered the costs this could entail and, shocked, turned it down.

Decades had passed since then. In the reading room from 1901, citizens could read newspapers and magazines of all kinds. There were also around 100 reference books available. Voluntary supervision was carried out by "ladies from civic circles and teachers in the afternoons and intelligent workers in the evenings".

The first annual report emphasized that the reading room fulfilled a special mission "when it contributed to softening the contrasts in Offenbach's public life, which was riven by political parties, as a central place that was completely untouched by them".

The committee emphasized its educational mission as follows: "We want to meet the need for education of the mind and heart that exists in the widest circles and to counteract the excessive attendance of taverns and brutal amusements as well as the devouring poison of colportage novels and trashy literature by presenting useful instruction and ennobling entertainment."

Of course, this was not a library. In the winter of 1902/03, the committee therefore asked the citizens to donate money and books to help build a library. The reading room was to be supplemented by a lending library.

As a result, the town fathers were no longer stingy. Money came from the town hall. The town council formed a committee, and from 1904 the institution was allowed to call itself the town library and entrust its administration to a civil servant. It is to him that we owe the statistics, which take a close look at the borrowers for 1904/05. It lists 102 civil servants, 179 merchants, 794 craftsmen, 184 unskilled workers, 426 schoolchildren and "455 women".

In 1907, having become fully municipal, the library moved into the second floor of Isenburg Castle. It became a gem. The leather manufacturer Ludo Mayer contributed to this. He donated the funds for ceiling paintings and wall carvings. There was a reading room for ladies only, which was not only in keeping with the morals of the time, but also for female readers. The window niches were an invitation to cozy reading.

Defects were also displayed. "The stoves are exploding," complained one report. Soot and dust damaged books and walls. On top of that, visitors complained about the cold: "They grouped around the stove, freezing throughout the winter."

Nevertheless, the library remained in the castle until 1934. The first full-time city librarian was Friedrich Jöst in 1916, an unforgettable local historian. He was followed in 1928 by Ado9lf Völker, who was still providing the Offenbach-Post with articles on local history in the 1950s.

But the castle became cramped. In 1934, the library made way for the town archive. Suddenly, the library found itself "far from the beaten track", in the house at Frankfurter Straße 143, near Dreieichpark. This could not go well, and in fact the next move followed in 1938, to the former hospital at Kaiserstrasse 18.

The building, which was completed in 1858 and last used as a school, survived the bombing that wiped out most of the administrative buildings. And that made it valuable for the city administration. In 1950, it became the seat of the magistrate, a temporary town hall, which was replaced by the library in a backyard on Bismarckstraße.

It was a makeshift facility with a dwindling stock of books. Books were borrowed from a narrow table that was pushed into a doorway. But 1952 was the year of liberation, the beginning of the path to the present. The city library was able to move into one of the two wing and head buildings of the destroyed Büsingpalais on Herrnstraße and Linsenberg, as a neighbor of the Klingspor Museum. Offenbach re-established culture where it had been concentrated from the 18th century until the middle of the 19th century, in the combination of the names Geothe, Bernard, André, Senefelder and La Roche.

The collaboration between Dr. Hermann Maß, head of the cultural department, and Adolf Bayer, city planning officer, resulted in something groundbreaking: Germany's first open access library, giving visitors free access to books. Its design attracted pilgrimages of architects and librarians to Offenbach. In November 1953, Federal President Theodor Heuss visited the much-discussed building.

The tower-like design of the interior suggested the name Bücherturm (book tower). The library director Ernst Buchholz is said to have been the first to use it. It was also through his efforts that the Bücherturm became a permanent fixture of cultural life. Concerts and lectures are at home there, as well as light-hearted and contemplative events and, of course, readings by authors. And the books are always there.

By Lothar R. Braun

Published in the Offenbach Post