70k Books Found in Hidden Library in This Germany Home (2023)

lava_pidgeon

I'm not sure about other countries. There is a culture refuse to throw away books in Germany. People would put on the streets for free (I found two interesting books with this method).

mjd

But you nobody can read 70k books, so what was the point? He had a library nobody knew about, full of books he hadn't read. That's not a library, it's an imitation of a library built by someone who doesn't understand what a library is for.

skyberrys

The slanted library lining the attic of his home is to die for. I could easily see this happening to myself in my old age. I love books and it's quite a challenge to keep and collect all of them. Why haven't I thought of slanted ceiling book cases before? And 70k books by the time you are 88, that's only 1000 books per year after age 18. Okay that does work out to more than 3 books a day, so reading every single one is challenging, but in your old age an unread book is something to look forward to. I'm sad to read that he's passed away.

e28eta

I went to a local estate sale of a professor, whose entire downstairs (4+ rooms) was filled with bookshelves full of books. They were well organized by topic, and covered a range of topics (math, science, health, fiction, biographies, etc). It was more functional than artistic, comparing it to the pics in this post, but the number of books was probably the same order of magnitude as our local public library’s collection, or a small bookstore. I went at the end of the 2 or 3 day sale, and it still looked full. They were charging fair prices for the used books, but were going to pay to haul the remainder to the dump. I’m still unhappy about the waste, even though I mostly understand it.

gom_jabbar

This reminds me of Peter Sloterdijk describing books as "bewusstseinserweiternde Drogen" (mind-expanding drugs) and "Waffen" (weapons) in his working library. [0] [0] https://youtu.be/Wn5EgkuQb5U?t=293 (4:53)

WalterGR

I’m not familiar with the “modern car” unit of weight. “With an assumed average weight of 300 to 400 grams per book, the weight of around 15 modern cars is currently stored in Schröder’s detached house.” 350 grams x 70,000 books = 24,500 kg. About 54,000 lbs. Can a ‘typical’ house bear that weight??

geniium

What is very surprising for me is the height of the books. If you look closer at the picture, seems that most of the books are the same height, so that's very strange for any book collection except if he was collecting the same book editors or... Am missing something ?

WalterBright

My dad left me several thousand books. Mostly about airplanes and warfare.

vunderba

I wish they had talked a bit more about how he managed to re-read any of the books, because from the pictures a great deal of them seemed like they were rather inaccessible.

nurettin

7k for 70,000 books sounds insane.

chickensong

Awesome. I bet the acoustics of the house are very interesting.

HackerNewt-doms

In Germany, there was a trend of setting up public bookcases in town squares where passers-by could drop off or take books. But as things go, after a while, they slowly started to go out of fashion. Since then, kebab shops and barbershops have become a more common sight in the cityscape (Stadtbild).

Borrible

So, how many of them has he read?