Address:
Göttingen State and University Library of Lower Saxony
Historical building
Papendiek 14
37073 Göttingen
karten@sub.uni-goettingen.de
www.sub.uni-goettingen.de
We are there for you during opening hours, but use is also possible at other times by appointment.
Almost all atlases are freely accessible in the reading room of the map collection. Map sheets of the topographical and thematic map series and all individual maps are made available to you directly.
You can order the materials by telephone or e-mail so that we can make them available for your visit.
The collections cannot be loaned to your home. However, you can scan them yourself or have them scanned or copied by us. The holdings of the Map Department are included in the document delivery services of the SUB Göttingen.
Contact person: Mechthild Schüler
Platz der Göttinger Sieben 1
37073 Göttingen Google Maps
Germany
+49 551 39-5278 (Tel.)
schueler@sub.uni-goettingen.de
Since its foundation, the SUB Göttingen has collected maps and atlases at great financial and personnel expense. In addition to individual purchases, the acquisition of generous donations and important bequests laid the foundation for one of the most important map collections in Europe. More than 2,000 maps from the 17th and 18th centuries were added to the collection with the foundation of the university library, the Bülow Library. The famous atlases by Wilhelm (1571-1638) and Johann Blaeu (1596-1673) and Johann Jansson (1588-1664) deserve special mention. Johann Michael Franz (1700-1761), the holder of the first geographical chair in Göttingen, added around 3,000 maps from the Nuremberg map publisher Johann Baptist Homann (1664-1724) to the collection.
Donations from the Russian Baron Georg Thomas von Asch (1729-1807) added unique maps of Siberia, Russia and Asia to the collection. The map collection received a large number of nautical charts from the British Hydrographical Office, which were subject to the greatest secrecy at the time and are very rare, as a result of the personal union between Hanover and England. In 1811, the library received a further 1,500 map sheets from the estate of the natural historian and economist Johann Beckmann (1739-1811).
In 1888, large parts of the map collection were given on permanent loan to the Institute of Geography ("Geographischer Apparat") for about a century. Today, the historical holdings are back in the map collection of the SUB Göttingen and can be searched via the catalogues. In addition to the important old holdings of more than 65,000 sheets, the collection includes around 320,000 map sheets and 11,000 atlases from the period after 1945. The collection is rounded off by the extremely extensive holdings of geoscientific literature in the Göttingen State and University Library.
Mechthild Schüler
