The Fall of the Bibliographic Wall: Libraries and Archives in Unified Germany

The end of the Cold War and the unification of Germany have inaugurated a new era in German library and archival history. Divided collections are being reunited, bodies of material considered lost after World War II are resurfacing in Eastern Europe as well as in Germany, and some archives heretofore closed are opening for the first time. Besides its inherent historical and political interest, the situation poses special challenges for the European administrators of the collections, as well as to American librarians assisting researchers who need to know about new resources. This article places recent developments in their historical context and summarizes information about collections whose status is likely to continue changing in the near term.