Innovation and ideology: Walter Hofmann's library work in Dresden-Plauen and Leipzig

Abstract

Born in Dresden in 1879, the son of an artisan engraver, Walter Hofmann became one of the most innovative and influential, but also most controversial, librarians in early twentieth-century Germany. Hoffman entered librarianship having been commissioned by Ida Bienert, the wife of a wealthy manufacturer, to plan, organize and manage a public library for the inhabitants of Dresden-Plauen, a district of Dresden. The library opened in 1906. The following year Hofmann began to publish his 'pilot' ideas, which soon attracted the attention of professional colleagues. In 1913 the City of Leipzig entrusted him with the responsibility of building a city library system, which allowed him to test his library model on a larger scale. At the same time he began to extend his influence on German librarianship, an influence which continued to increase until the 1930s. His aggressive commitment, his tendency to be polemical, and his authoritarian personality, as well as his inventiveness and knowledge as an expert, made him extremely successful. But these qualities also resulted in factional conflict, the so-called 'Richtungsstreit'. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Hofman tried to save as much as possible of his achievements, but was forced to retire when his protector, the mayor of Leipzig, Carl Goerdeler, fell from power in 1937. Hofmann passed away in Leipzig in 1952, without having regained his former importance, although his ideas retained a strong following until the 1960s. A critical evaluation of his life's work reveals that his interpretation of education and cultural enrichment was not particularly original and was deeply rooted in nineteenth-century thinking. Hofmann was an ambivalent figure who liked to behave as a reformer but who was in fact, ultimately, a 'conservative revolutionary'.

A version of this paper was first presented at the Fourth Anglo-German Library History Conference, held at the British Library, September 2005. The theme of the conference was 'Libraries and Innovation'.