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History of the Library

As a library for the newly founded Institute for German and Rhenish Legal History, the history of this library officially begins with its foundation by Hermann Conrad in 1949, but it has a prehistory in that the library of Conrad's predecessor in the chair, Karl August Eckhardt, was the first to be acquired in 1949. However, this library had not been acquired for Eckhardt by the university, but by the SS-Ahnenerbe, as Himmler supported Eckhardt's research financially and Eckhardt's research was in the service of the Nazis. The orientation of this first collection of books reflected this political orientation, for example with regard to Indo-European and early historical research. When he handed over his library to Conrad, Eckhardt asked for a receipt, arguing that it was not known when the NS would return; the shocked Conrad complied and signed.

The library of a legal history institute can never be complete. It is therefore all the more important to set priorities. A first focus can be seen in the collection of the legal text collections belonging to the German territories of the early modern period. This applies not only to the larger states such as the Reich and Austria, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony, but also to a collection of legal texts belonging to the smaller states - these are indexed in a separate directory. In addition, French legal texts were always collected as well as basic French literature.

In accordance with the methodological conviction that the sources themselves must be studied, the legal history textbooks (H) as well as the law editions from the MGH to the Reichstag decrees and the Freiheit-vom-Stein memorial edition to modern collections were acquired (K). In addition, there are the collections on Rhenish history, especially as “German” legal history only really begins with the German Empire. There are only a few institutional legal history libraries that recognize the importance of the region. This was a wise and forward-looking decision when the Institute was founded. Other special collections point to the research interests of its predecessors, such as university history.

In the area of journals, the “Zeitschrift für geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft” shows how much Bonn's legal history was and is traditionally focused on Savigny. Due to the close proximity to the other institutes working in the field of legal history, it was only possible to maintain a subscription to the ZRG GA until 2019. This meant that, in addition to the other legal history journals and those of other countries (Revue historique), it was still possible to maintain some basic historical journals with the aim of providing legal scholars with fundamental information for their research.

The rarities - i.e. old legal / legal-historical literature - were initially acquired under Professor Conrad with a strict division of tasks between the institutes working on legal history: in Roman law, common law was collected in addition to the ZRG RA and ancient Roman law; in canon law, the sources of canon law and Protestant canon law were acquired in addition to the ZRG KA.

Only the history and literature of criminal law was collected at the Institute for German Legal History. Constitutional law and other public law materials were mainly acquired when reunification provided the opportunity to obtain further sources and reprints. In 2003, a small remainder of the historical library of the Imperial Post Office for Prussian administrative law was added (approx. 200 works).

The collection of important textbooks on European legal traditions (M), legal and state philosophy (N) and the history of international law (O) serve the purpose of providing initial access to the various areas of legal history.

The acquisition of Knut Wolfgang Nörr's canonical-proceduralist library (approx. 1000 volumes) in 2019/20 was a significant enrichment, continuing the tradition of legal history research in Bonn from Stephan Kuttner to K.W. Nörr on the one hand and M.A. von Bethmann-Hollweg to W. Endemann on the other.

The biggest change came in 2025 with the acquisition of the historical library of the Higher Regional Court of Braunschweig. This not only strengthened the presence of Lower Saxony state law, but also the Ius Commune. This means that the legal history libraries no longer only consist of collections that reflect the perspectives of the 20th century, but also contain the literature that was necessary for legal work from the 18th to the early 20th century.

Special collections concern small-format literature from the imperial era, in particular dissertations (shelfmark group S). Professor Kleinheyer's special print collection contains impressive collections of small-format texts on individual (Bonn) researchers.