After a heavy rain shower, large amounts of water ran into the magazine of the Central and State Library (ZLB) in Berlin on Wednesday morning. The bursting of a rainwater pipe led to the flooding, said the library spokeswoman. As a result, a magazine measuring around 1,000 square meters was affected in a short space of time.
In an Instagram post from the library, employees can be seen forming a chain and scooping out the water with buckets. “Everyone who could helped. There were probably 60 to 80 of us,” said the spokeswoman. ZLB operations director Jonas Fansa said in a report on the RBB broadcaster: “There are hundreds of thousands of books here, some of them old, which are at acute risk.” The library also said that its vinyl and magazine collection had been damaged.
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The books didn’t get wet directly: the water was seven to ten centimeters deep and reached the bottom edge of the magazine shelves. However, the damage was mainly caused by splashing water and humidity. “We will most likely have a problem with mold,” said Fansa. Employees are currently trying to remove as many books, records and magazines as possible from the magazine in order to dry them and check them for possible damage.
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The library has been demanding for years that it be relocated to another building. “Water regularly penetrates the library. The current building is completely unsuitable as a library location. There really shouldn’t be any water pipes in a storage facility,” says the library spokesperson. The library has started a petition on its website, which states: “Accident in the ZLB after heavy rain: We need a new location more urgently than ever!”
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The ZLB currently has two locations: the Berlin City Library in Mitte, where the current water damage occurred, and the Amerika-Memorial Library in Kreuzberg. “It has long been known that the ZLB needs more space. There was a project to build a new building on Blücherplatz, but that would have been too expensive,” says a spokesman for the Senator for Culture, Joe Chialo (CDU). He is currently favoring a move to the Galeries Lafayette building on Friedrichstrasse. The luxury department store will soon close, according to the latest information at the end of July.
“The building would be well suited,” says the spokesman for the Senator for Culture. However, it is not yet clear whether the project can be implemented. The main problem is the cost – over 500 million euros. “And next year, between eight and twelve percent of the budget is to be cut,” says the spokesman. It seems that the fact that the books will soon be able to be better housed there is anything but a done deal.