Kamenz | Lessing Library: A Living Room for the City

Wolfgang Melzer can be reached in an old-school library. The chairman of the Friends of the Kamenz City Library is based 500 kilometers to the west in Detmold. At the Lippe State Library, he is researching the playwright Christian Dietrich Grabbe, to whom he plans to dedicate a story. Academic work is carried out in the reading rooms; silence is the highest duty of users. Therefore, Melzer apologizes, and he has to go outside to make a phone call.

He wouldn't have to do that in the library in his hometown of Kamenz, which is named after another poet born there, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and whose well-being he looks after with the two dozen or so members of the support association. There is no room here where silence is paramount. Melzer could, for example, make himself comfortable on a sofa in the foyer. He would just have to accept the fact that the shouts of young people playing on games consoles in a private room could be heard in the background. The association head could also make phone calls in an area with tables and chairs, where, of course, students might be discussing a lecture or practicing it on a digital whiteboard. On this day shortly before the holidays, no one is giving lectures here. Instead, a high school student is tinkling "Alle meine Entchen" on a piano.

In earlier times, this would have earned him a reprimand from a librarian. Marion Kutter, the director of the Kamenz library, is pleased that the instrument is being used. "Informality is a major asset of our library," she says. There's certainly no room for shouting in her library, but conversations are welcome, too. Anyone who finds this distracting while reading can retreat to reading islands that offer more privacy. If one compares its interior to a house, it wouldn't be like a study, says Kutter: "Our library is intended to be the city's living room."

Libraries have changed a lot. When Lessing, the Kamenz namesake, became librarian in Wolfenbüttel in May 1770, they were often elite institutions, both bastions of scholarship and testaments to the wealth of their noble founders. The Kamenz library was originally reserved for high school students. Later, it opened to the wider urban population. But even here, the purpose was narrowly defined: libraries collected books that interested parties could use for a limited period of time. That chapter is over, says Kutter: "The era of being a mere lending center is over for public libraries."

Where this journey is headed was recently discussed at the German Library Congress, which concludes this Friday in Bremen. Around 3,000 experts deliberated on the role their institutions play in democratic society and where their self-image is developing. Libraries have increasingly become public spaces where people can spend time and exchange ideas without having to read; where they can use workshops with 3D printers or recording studios; where, in addition to books, drills can also be borrowed. In pioneering institutions like the Oodi Central Library in Helsinki, books are only visible at second glance, or are no longer visible at all.

But you don't have to travel to Helsinki to experience what a modern library can look like. While on vacation, Marion Kutter visited libraries in Dresden and Potsdam, Zwickau and Freiberg, collecting ideas that inspired her. Back then, her own library was still located in Lessing's birthplace: a section above a museum dedicated to the poet, with the children's section in the former coal cellar below, without windows. "It wasn't a good situation," says Kutter. Workflows were difficult to organize, and 350 square meters of usable space was far too small.

Then the Bautzen district built an extension for the high school in Kamenz. At the request of the city, a further floor was added. The library also found its new home in this building – a 900-square-meter space. Incorporating the ideas Kutter had gathered on vacation, the Kamenz-based firm PDW Architekten developed a public library that could now inspire colleagues in the field and was awarded the 2023 Saxon Library Prize shortly after its opening. It "exemplifies how professional library work and innovative strength have led to an inviting meeting place, event venue, and cultural center in Kamenz," praised Saxony's Minister of Culture Barbara Klepsch.

The foyer itself is inviting, although there are no books on display at first – except for an installation featuring a deck chair and air mattress advertising a summer reading competition for students. Instead of books, there are armchairs and a coffee machine. "This creates a pleasant atmosphere," says Kutter, "and also generates some income."

To the right, the view opens into the children's area, which bears little resemblance to the basement of yesteryear. There are large windows and a sun-shaped light installation on the ceiling. The shelves are waist-high: "Even the little ones can reach them." A three-eyed mascot, the "Reading Monster," provides orientation. Accessories such as a pacifier or a crown indicate the target audience or genre of the books.

The lending system was also designed with the youngest readers in mind. This is also possible at terminals where readers can scan their books and check them out themselves. The desks can be adjusted in height at the touch of a button: "This means even three-year-olds can borrow their Pixies themselves." The terminals give users more autonomy. The technology enables the manager to better manage the limited resources of a small-town library. She has four "full-time equivalents" at her disposal, shared between four librarians and the caretaker. They keep the library open five days a week from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., process up to 5,000 new books and other media a year, sort out the same number of little-used ones, and organize over 150 events a year. The work has changed a lot since her training, says Kutter: "We still sometimes give tips for good crime novels, but that's the smallest part."

At times, it's unavailable for reading suggestions anyway. The terminals, along with a modern access system, also make it possible to keep the library open during hours when no staff is present: weekdays between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 9 a.m. The city council was initially skeptical about whether this "open library" principle would work. After two years, Kutter has been able to reassure local politicians: "There has been no damage whatsoever." Instead, the new opening hours have contributed to the number of users increasing to 120,000 per year – and that in a city with 17,000 inhabitants. Half of the visitors, Kutter emphasizes, are under 30 years old.

Such figures show that reading books is by no means a dying phenomenon. "We manage to keep young people reading," says Wolfgang Melzer, head of the association. He is sometimes amazed at what young people read. Books by Erwin Strittmatter, whom he and his fellow association members hold in high esteem, are disappearing from the shelves because they are no longer borrowed, unlike current bestsellers, whose literary value Melzer sometimes finds difficult to grasp. He would like to invite an author "to explain to us the secret of such books," he says. This should generate as much interest in Kamenz as the discussion rounds entitled "Words and White Wine," to which the association invites scholars twice a year, each time in front of 70 to 100 interested people.

Melzer and Kutter are convinced that libraries will continue to play an important role as spaces for public debate. Moreover, there's now more to borrow in Kamenz than just books, films, and CDs. A "Library of Things" offers, for example, a projector with screen or a karaoke system. "Sharing resources is in the DNA of libraries," says Kutter, who, of course, always wants a connection to "literature, language, or the generation of knowledge": "I wouldn't include cargo bikes in the range." Instead, there are educational computers and robots for children.

A robot is also the only unfulfilled wish on her list of ideas for a modern library. Such devices could now advise readers and guide them to the location of a book on the shelves, says Kutter. Someday, she hopes, there will be enough money for such an "employee" in the Kamenz Lessing Library, which is anything but an old-school library.