The historical archive of scientific publishing house Springer will be kept by Berlin's Central and Regional Library (ZLB) in future. The move is the result of a donation agreement between Springer Science+Business Media and ZLB.
The whole collection includes the correspondence archive and more than 15,000 books published by Springer up to 1945. The historical collection also includes some 1,250 licensed editions and journals, reviews, translation files and accounting records. The move from Springer's Heidelberg offices to Berlin is currently taking place in various stages.
The first delivery includes the oldest author correspondence from when the publishing house was founded in 1842 up to 1936. The historical documents are initially being taken to Leipzig, where the material, some of which is 170 years old, will undergo restoration work. This first batch contains a large number of letters from Springer authors, including many famous figures from the 1920s - Einstein, Born, Sauerbruch, Courant, Hilbert, Ehrlich, Meitner, Hahn and Prinzhorn to name just a few. Other valuable documents from the early years, when Springer published works of fiction before acquiring its clearly defined profile as a scientific publishing house, include handwritten letters from Theodor Fontane and Jeremias Gotthelf.
The remaining documents will be moved to Berlin during a second stage scheduled for the summer of 2009.
