“You’re still amazed today”: children’s books in Blutenburg Castle

The treasury of the International Youth Library in Schloss Blutenburg in Munich has been transformed into a wonder chamber of knowledge: in addition to rare children’s and youth books on the subject of “knowledge”, the curators present current children’s books and lots of rarities, from stuffed owls to corals and old cameras. The historical books come from the Werner Ziesel collection from Illertissen: “My mother gave me two devotional books and then I went to an antiquarian bookshop and looked to see if something similar still existed and I happened to see a book of fairy tales, Volksmärchen der Germans, and I thought to myself, that’s also a nice collecting area.

Most important collection criterion: rarity!

In 1988, that and the budding collector had long since grown up. Since then, Werner Ziesel has not only collected prayer books, but also children’s books: fairy tales, sagas, fables, picture books, ABC primers, song books, adventure stories and children’s magazines. He collected more than 1,300 books in this way – unnoticed by his three children! They were amazed when their father took thousands of children’s books out of his study a few years ago and exhibited them for the first time.

Werner Ziesel never dreamed as a child that he would later own so many books: “We come from humble backgrounds, six siblings, my father was a simple railway official. I still remember how my uncle read every evening. I can I can’t remember my mother or father ever reading a picture book, they really had to work.”

My parents didn’t have time to read to me

The most important criterion when collecting: they have to be rare and: old! His oldest book dates from 1550, when the printing press had only just been invented. Incidentally, the books were not all that expensive, some only cost 30 or 40 euros.

The current show shows a small selection from his collection, knowledge books for children. Professions, constellations, butterflies, foreign peoples, countries, plants and animals: prepared for children and young people. Some of the books seem more intended for students, others are for first-time readers or small children, because – as one of the books says: just as you give a child breast milk and not brandy, the spiritual nourishment must also be tailored to the child , instead of “tormenting it with memory stuff.”

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