Cartographic Treasures Destroyed “With Fire and Sword”? The Unwritten Story of the Map Collection of the Bavarian Army Library

Abstract

This paper deals with the unwritten story of one of the largest collections of early-modern military maps in pre-war Germany, its later dispersion to different institutions, as well as the attempts to reconstruct this cimelia or treasured library of the former Bavarian Army, founded at the beginning of the nineteenth century. During World War II most of the maps of the Wehrkreisbücherei VII were stored in several locations outside of Munich, and survived destruction. After 76 years we can reconstruct the unwritten odyssey of this important map collection. One part was integrated into the Bavarian State Library, where some valuable manuscript maps were recently cataloged. The largest section was taken by American soldiers to the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., where it was stored for more than a decade. This cache was restored to Germany in 1962, when a political dispute arose between the German State and the Free State of Bavaria that was not settled until 1968. This collection became part of the Wehrbereichsbibliothek VI, located since 1978 at Munich’s Bundeswehr University. Unfortunately, due to political decisions in 1984, this section was relocated to a provincial museum.