The collection of the East Asia Department of Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - PK has a history dating back to the founding of the library in the 17th century. Unfortunately a large part of our pre-World War II acquisitions - the so called 'Old Collection' was removed after the fall of Berlin in 1945 and was returned. Some of it may be found in the Jagiellon Library at Krakow, Poland, other parts are most probably in the Russian State Library in Moscow.

The present day holdings thus consist mainly of acquisitions made since the fifties, but thanks to the generous support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council) it has still been possible to build up the numerically largest East Asian collection in Europe.

Although the collection consists primarily of material in the East Asian languages, i.e. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Tibetan, Mongolian, and Uighur, it also includes western language books and periodicals covering the Far East and the individual countries. The main purpose of the collection is to represent a national CJK materials resource in Germany which is internationally renowned. The scope of the collection is however limited to the humanities and social sciences (with some other material collected where appropriate and if relevant to the main scope of the collection).

The collection is considered to be especially strong in recent publications covering East Asia, the individual regions and subjects such as politics, law, economics, recent history, modern literature and modern art. The collection also holds rare older material from China and Japan such as manuscripts and woodblock prints.

The Staatsbibliothek currently holds more than 650,000 East Asian volumes in the original language and large numbers of relevant books about East Asia in western languages. It also acquires a further 25,000 items of CJK and Central Asian language - (Tibetan, Mongol, Uighur etc) material every year. About 4000 current periodicals are received on subscription.

Further Asian material (in the form of Japanese and South Korean official government publications) is available in the Staatsbibliothek. This material is administered by the Abteilung Amtsdruckschriften und Internationaler Amtlicher Schriftentausch (Official Governement Publications Department).

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.