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Facade of the Library

Lateral view of the Library

The Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire (BNU) (English: National and University Library), is a public library in Strasbourg, France. It is located on Place de la République, the former Kaiserplatz, and faces the Palais du Rhin.

[edit] History

View of the Library through Place de la République

After the total destruction of the previous municipal library and the city's archives by Prussian artillery during the Siege of Strasbourg, the BNU was founded by German Empire on 19 June 1872, and the task of setting up of its collections was given to the historian and professor Rodolphe Reuss. It was a regional library for the Reichsland Alsace-Lorraine, because according to a German tradition, every region should have one library. It was also an Academic library. The collections grew very fast thanks to multiple donations from all across Europe and also the United States, even if the loss of manuscripts like the Hortus Deliciarum could never be made up for.^[1] The present-day building, a work of the architects August Hartel and Skjold Neckelmann, was opened in 1895.

After World War I returned to France provinces lost in 1870, and arose question about future of this library. After some hesitation, French government had decided to keep the library.

The library holds about 3 000 000 volums and is the 2nd largest collection in France.^[2] The collections comprises among other things 2 000 incunabula,^[3] 6 700 manuscripts (plus 29 000 others from the archives - kept by the library - of the De Turckheim family, and several other thousands from the alsatian Franciscan order)^[4] and 5 200 papyri.^[5]