










































Christian Worldview in Academic Information Literacy Instruction


47

The Politics of Library Science in 
Weimar Germany
 The Eichler-Harnack Exchange
Evan Francis Kuehn, Assistant Professor of Information Literacy, North Park 
University

ABSTR ACT: In 1923, the famous theologian-librarian Adolf von Harnack 
responded to an essay written by Ferdinand Eichler, Director of the 
University Library at Graz, titled “Library Science as Science of Value, 
Library Politics as World Politics.” In the exchange, the two librarians 
took opposing sides in a discussion about the purpose of academic 
libraries and collection development. Eichler’s idealistic and universalist 
approach saw librarianship as a “science over the sciences” that held 
a unique responsibility for world culture through its responsibility for 
books. Harnack, on the other hand, took a more pragmatic approach 
and recognized the limitations posed by political economy to the 
mission and practices of the library. Although published a century 
ago, the political pressures and vocational ideals discussed in these 
essays remain surprisingly relevant for theological librarianship. This 
paper highlights Harnack’s underappreciated role as the director of 
the Royal Prussian Library, discusses the Eichler-Harnack exchange, 
and introduces excerpts from the two essays translated into English 
for the first time.

In 1939, Felix E. Hirsch, then a librarian at Bard College, wrote an 
essay in memory of Adolf von Harnack for The Library Quarterly 
titled “The Scholar as Librarian,” in which he recounted important 
biographical details of the legendary historian’s life, especially as they 
related to his service as the director of the Prussian Royal Library. 
In a section on Harnack’s theory of library science, Hirsch writes 
that “in a long and pungent essay which contains the kernel of his 
philosophy of librarianship, he objects to the exaggerated ideas about 
his profession which were held by the Austrian librarian, Eichler. 
Library science, Harnack felt, was not a superscience” (Hirsch 1939, 
316). Harnack’s essay borrowed its title from the pamphlet to which 



48    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

it responded, “Library Science as Science of Value, Library Politics as 
World Politics,” by Ferdinand Eichler (1923), Director of the University 
Library at Graz. In reading these essays, we gain an understanding 
of two opposing viewpoints on the nature of librarianship from the 
Weimar Republic, which still read as quite contemporary, despite 
their age. Many of the political critiques and questions about how 
and whether librarianship constitutes a science are still discussed 
today, and often on very similar terms. Following a historical intro-
duction to the Eichler-Harnack exchange are translated excerpts 
from the two essays.

Ferdinand Eichler’s initial pamphlet was written in April of 1923. 
Harnack’s response was published as an essay in the Zentralblatt für 
Bibliothekswesen, an important library journal associated with the 
State Library of Berlin (Breslau 1990). The essays deal with ques-
tions about the philosophy of librarianship, and so they speak for 
themselves to a certain extent. But behind their theoretical discus-
sions stood fascinating lives and complex histories that are worth 
investigating.

BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT

Within theological circles, Harnack is well known as a champion of 
liberal, scientific approaches to Protestant theology at the turn of the 
twentieth century. His most widely read book, What is Christianity? 
sought to identify an essence of the faith, a kernel at the heart 
of the husks of historical developments. He published a famous 
multi-volume History of Dogma, studies of the expansion of early 
Christianity, an important study of the early heretic Marcion, and, 
significant for theological librarians, Über den privaten Gebrauch 
der Heiligen Schriften in der alten Kirche, a study of literacy and the 
private reading of the Bible in late antiquity. 

Beyond his prolific career as a theologian and church historian, 
though, Harnack was one of the most celebrated German scholars 
of the twentieth century and played an integral role in shaping the 
modern European academic world. He was the founding head of the 
Kaiser Wilhelm Societies, now known as the Max Planck Institutes. 
(Max Planck himself succeeded Harnack in this position.) And, most 



Papers    49

relevant for our consideration, Harnack served as General Director 
of the Prussian Royal Library from 1905–1921.

Ferdinand Eichler is not nearly as well-known, and yet Eichler 
also had an influential career as a philologist and a librarian and 
deserves to be much more widely read than he is (Zvonar 2003a 
19–32; Zvonar 2003b). Unlike Harnack, who was a theologian turned 
librarian, Eichler spent his entire career in librarianship, and taught 
and researched in the field of library science. He wrote a program-
matic text on The Concept and Task of Librarianship in 1894 and 
on Library Politics at the End of the Nineteenth Century in 1897, 
both themes that will resurface in the 1923 essay. Eichler also, like 
Harnack, was engaged with manuscript studies. While Harnack 
mostly worked with early church manuscripts, Eichler’s period of 
specialization was early modern literature. Exemplary of this work 
was his 1908 study of a Bible copied by Erasmus Stratter, a fifteenth-
century scribe, and held by the Graz library.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The period after World War I and the 1918 Revolution was, unsurpris-
ingly, extremely volatile in Germany, but there were also important 
developments in the academy. Friedrich Althoff served as the minis-
ter of education during these years and developed what came to be 
known as the “Althoff System.” Germany was perceived to be behind 
the United States and nations of western Europe, and Harnack and 
Althoff both pushed for the development of the research university 
as we know it today. 

Upon his appointment at the Prussian Royal Library, Harnack 
needed to prove himself as the new General Director; he was not a 
trained librarian, although he was a recognized scholar and admin-
istrator. He very effectively lobbied for an increase in the library’s 
budget, though. He established book circulation for the first time 
at the institution—previously it was entirely non-circulating—in 
hopes of improving research outcomes. And during his tenure, a 
new library building was constructed (Hirsch 1939, 300, 311).

Finally, an important aspect of librarianship in Germany more 
generally that is alluded to in the essays was the development of 
the Deutsche Bücherei just before World War I. The Bücherei was a 



50    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

library program based in Leipzig that sought to collect, exhaustively, 
every book published in the German language from the year 1913 
forward. This project is still underway today, now called the Deutsche 
Nationalbibliothek, based in both Leipzig and Frankfurt. Harnack 
actually opposed this project, or at least rejected its philosophy as 
a model for the research university (Hirsch 1939, 308). Not every 
book needed to be in a research collection, and on the other hand, 
a research collection always needed to be international in scope. 
It couldn’t simply collect German work exhaustively, and neglect 
work in other languages. This was a rival model that was being 
developed at the time. A century later, the Bücherei coexists with 
more traditional research library models. 

As mentioned previously, Harnack needed to prove himself as 
a library director, and did this in an extremely effective manner. 
He was known to only be on the library premises for one or two 
hours a day and spent most of his time advocating for it with stake-
holders (Hirsch 1939, 306). Harnack was meticulous about what 
we would today call assessment and completed significant reports 
on the library collection. Harnack is also known for his concept of 
a “political economy of librarianship”; he spoke of professors of 
librarianship as a part of the national economy, describing them 
as “geisteswirtschaftlichen”—which roughly translates to what we 
would refer to as the “knowledge economy” today (Harnack 1921; 
Umstätter 2009, 328–9). This practical and quantitative approach 
to librarianship is part of what Eichler was objecting to in his more 
idealistic approach.

It is difficult to overstate how volatile a year 1923 was for Germany. 
The Ruhr Valley was taken by French occupation forces at the 
beginning of the year. Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch occurred in 
November. And throughout 1923, devastating hyperinflation rocked 
German society. The following charts visualize monthly average 
exchange rates for the paper mark, an economic indicator that is not 
insignificant for considerations related to library management. We 
see that already at the beginning of the year the mark was nearly 
worthless—in January the rate was almost 18,000 marks to the dol-
lar. By the time Eichler published his essay on librarianship, this 
had risen to 25,000 marks to the dollar (see figure 1). And begin-
ning in late summer, inflation was so out of control that the steady 
climb from earlier in the year looks like a flat line (see figure 2). By 



Papers    51

the time Harnack published his response to Eichler in December, 
the exchange rate was over four trillion marks to the dollar. It is 
incredible that this material context hardly factors into the con-
versation of these two essays. Eichler’s situation in Austria would 
have been somewhat better than Harnack’s in Germany, but they 
also experienced devastating inflation in 1921. Certain individuals 
and institutions with international connections were relatively 
sheltered from the worst consequences of hyperinflation. But it is 
still difficult to imagine how these libraries continued to function 
on a day-to-day basis.

0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

120000

January February March April May June

M
ar

k 
to

 D
ol

la
r Eichler article 

Figure 1: Dollar Exchange Rate of Paper Mark, January to June 1923 (Feldman 1977, 
472)



52    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

0

5E+11

1E+12

1.5E+12

2E+12

2.5E+12

3E+12

3.5E+12

4E+12

4.5E+12

Ja
nu
ar
y

Fe
br
ua
ry

Ma
rc
h

Ap
ril Ma

y
Ju
ne Ju

ly

Au
gu
st

Se
pt
em
be
r

Oc
to
be
r

No
ve
m
be
r

De
ce
m
be
r

M
ar

k 
to

 D
ol

la
r

Eichler article

Harnack article

Figure 2: Dollar Exchange Rate of Paper Mark, January to December 1923 (Feldman 
1977, 472)

TRANSLATION EXCERPTS

As the title of these essays suggests, both Eichler and Harnack sought 
to define library science and library politics. Following are excerpts 
from my translation of the two essays. 

Eichler on library science:

Given the infinite diversity of intellectual products, which arise day after day 
and find their way to the general public, the question concerning the worth 
of these products individually and as a collection cannot be ignored. We 
need to make its assessment a science, which as a science of values is dis-
interested in individual literary trends, objective, and equipped with critical 
resources, [and] which also makes use of other empirical sciences, standing 



Papers    53

over the intellectual chaos and seeking to master it. We name this 
science today by a century old concept, Bibliothekswissenschaft. We 
call it this because the place of the collection of literature, the library, is 
also literature’s birthplace, because the elements which form the condi-
tions for its development—writing, and the book with its changing forms 
of appearance alternating over time—derive their ultimate meaning in 
the library and its effectiveness.... In its defining features, it is a science 
of value, that is, a science of the intellectual values laid down in the 
literature. If you wanted to express its essence in as concise a definition 
as possible, you could say: library science is the investigation of liter-
ary monuments with regard to the conditions, the nature, and the 
consequences of their creation, their dissemination, and their use. 
Its goal, just like every other science, is to know the truth, which in this 
case is the truth of the value of literary monuments. (Eichler 1923, 6–7; 
emphasis mine)

Harnack on library science:

“Library Science as Science of Value”—here I must stop already. The highly 
debatable “library science” certainly also has to do with value judg-
ments—which human science does not?—but this is not characteristic of it.

When the poet stepped before Zeus, the world was already divided; like-
wise, if the librarian steps before Science, he finds it already assigned to 
particular scientific disciplines. No, Eichler pleads: he says that it is a 
“science over the sciences.” But if there really is such a science, it has 
long been in the hands of the philosophers, or rather the sociologists, 
and they don’t think at all about relinquishing or parceling out the task 
given to them. What remains, then, of library science?

Library science, enlivened by the love of books, is the sum of the knowledge 
of the library and the book in itself—one can also call it a science—out of 
which comes the art of finding, collecting, conserving, and showing 
interested parties how to use books for themselves. The final purpose 
is the primary and ultimate purpose of this “science”—it is altogether 
focused upon service. (Harnack 1923, 532–3; emphasis mine)

Eichler on library politics:

And this new world of facts appears in library politics, which we have 
to consider from the standpoint of world politics. The goal of this world 
politics appears to be worldview.

By library politics we understand the practical application of the principles 
of the value of literary monuments researched by library science. (Eichler 
1923, 11)



54    ATL A 2024 PROCEEDINGS

Harnack on library politics:

The librarian should chart his course on the basis of the guidelines 1) 
that the library must let its sun shine “on the good and bad,” 2) that 
on the other hand following the real current rate of research, it allow as 
much space as possible for the works of genius and the great talents, 
and 3) that it must consider the needs of posterity, since nobody else 
considers this.

In this way the transition from selection to library politics is established. 
If selection determines library politics, it cannot be more determined 
than has been remarked here; because what will become of libraries, if 
here the liberal, there the conservative, here the old-fashioned, there the 
modern, here the materialist, there the vitalist, here the Catholic, there 
the dissident, etc., has the greatest say? (Harnack 1923, 535–6; emphasis 
is mine)

REFERENCES

Breslau, Ralf. 1990. “Das ‘Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswessen’ in 
der Weimarer Republik.” Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und 
Bibliographie 37: 223–238.

Eichler, Ferdinand. 1923. Bibliothekswissenschaft as Wertwissenschaft, 
Bibliothekspolitik as Weltpolitik. Graz and Leipzig: Leuschner 
und Lubensky.

Feldman, Gerald D. 1977. Iron and Steel in the German Inflation, 
1916–1923. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Harnack, Adolf von. 1921. “Die Professur für Bibliothekswissenschaften 
in Preussen.” Vossische Zeitung (24 July.) 

Harnack, Adolf von. 1923. “Bibliothekswissenschaft as 
Wertwissenschaft, Bibliothekspolitik as Weltpolitik.” Zentralblatt 
für Bibliothekswesen 40 (12): 529–537.

Hirsch, Felix. 1939. “The Scholar as Librarian: to the memory of Adolf 
von Harnack.” The Library Quarterly 9: 299–320.

Umstätter, Walther. 2009. “Bibliothekswissenschaft im Wandel, von 
den geordneten Büchern zur Wissensorganisation.” Bibliothek 
33 (3): 327–32.



Papers    55

Zvonar, Ivica. 2003a. “Austrijski Teoretičar Knijižničarstva Ferdinand 
Eichler (1863–1945).” Vjesnik bibliotekara Hrvatske 46 (3–4): 19–32.

Zvonar, Ivica. 2003b. “Croatian Librarian Ivan Kostrenčić: From 
Vienna to Zagreb.” Geistes-, sozial-und kulturwissenschaftlicher 
Anzeiger 154 (12): 5–36.




