Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The number of copies required varies from country to country. Typically, the national library is the primary repository of these copies. In some countries there is also a legal deposit requirement placed on the government, and it is required to send copies of documents to publicly accessible libraries.
The German National Library is the central archival library and national bibliographic centre for the Federal Republic of Germany. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its task is to collect, permanently archive, comprehensively document and record bibliographically all German and German-language publications since 1913, foreign publications about Germany, translations of German works, and the works of German-speaking emigrants published abroad between 1933 and 1945, and to make them available to the public. The DNB is also responsible for the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie and several special collections like the Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933–1945, Anne-Frank-Shoah-Bibliothek and the Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum. The German National Library maintains co-operative external relations on a national and international level. For example, it is the leading partner in developing and maintaining bibliographic rules and standards in Germany and plays a significant role in the development of international library standards. The cooperation with publishers has been regulated by law since 1935 for the Deutsche Bücherei Leipzig and since 1969 for the Deutsche Bibliothek Frankfurt am Main.
The German Library in Frankfurt am Main (Deutsche Bibliothek abbreviated: DB) was a predecessor of the German National Library (DNB). From 1947 to 1990 it was the West German counterpart to the Deutsche Bücherei in Leipzig, founded in 1912, with the task of collecting German documents and publishing the national bibliography. After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the German Library and the German Library were merged to form "The German Library". Since 2006 it has been called the "German National Library". In 2006, around 8.3 million of the total holdings of the German National Library of 22.2 million units were stored in Frankfurt am Main. At the end of 2011, out of a total of around 27 million media copies, 10 million were archived in Frankfurt.
S. Fischer Verlag is a major German publishing house, which has operated as a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Group since 1962. The publishing house was founded in 1881 by Samuel Fischer in Berlin, but is currently based in Frankfurt am Main, and is traditionally counted among the most prestigious publishing houses in the German-speaking world.
Friedrich Blume was professor of musicology at the University of Kiel from 1938 to 1958. He was a student in Munich, Berlin and Leipzig, and taught in the last two of these for some years before being called to the chair in Kiel. His early studies were on Lutheran church music, including several books on J.S. Bach, but broadened his interests considerably later. Among his prominent works were chief editor of the collected Praetorius edition, and he also edited the important Eulenburg scores of the major Mozart Piano Concertos. From 1949 he was involved in the planning and writing of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.
The Gemeinsame Normdatei or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used mainly for documentation in libraries and increasingly also by archives and museums. The GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licence.
The Bibliography of Music Literature is an international bibliography of literature on music. It considers all kind of music and includes both current and older literature. Since 1968, the BMS editorial staff has also been working as the German committee for the Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM). The bibliography includes monographs, master’s theses and doctoral dissertations, articles and reviews from journals, Festschriften, conference proceedings, yearbooks, anthologies, and essays from critical reports. It contains printed media as well as online resources, data media, sound recordings, audiovisual media, and microforms. Each record provides the title in the original language, full bibliographic data, a keyword index, and mostly an abstract. Currently, BMS online has more than 315,000 records of literature on music. It is supplemented by the OLC-SSG Musicology, which incorporates the contents of some more 150 music journals from 1993 onward. BMS online participates actively on Virtual Library of Musicology (ViFaMusik), the central gateway for music and musicology in Germany.
The German Museum of Books and Writing in Leipzig, Germany, founded in 1884 as Deutsches Buchgewerbe-Museum, is the world's oldest museum of its kind, dedicated to collecting and preserving objects and documents as well as literature connected with the history of books, including paper, printing techniques, the art of illustration, and bookbinding. The museum is housed in a modern €60 million annex to the German National Library in Leipzig built in 2011.
Bach Digital, developed by the Bach Archive in Leipzig, is an online database which gives access to information on compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach and members of his family. Early manuscripts of such compositions are a major focus of the website, which provides access to high-resolution digitized versions of many of these. Scholarship on manuscripts and versions of compositions is summarized on separate pages, with references to scholarly sources and editions. The database portal has been online since 2010.
Wolfgang Rathert is a German musicologist.
Wilhelm Klatte was a German music theoretician, pedagogue, journalist and conductor.
Thomas Reuter is a German composer, choral conductor, and a pianist focused on free improvisation.
Inge Lammel, née Rackwitz was a German women musicologist, which dealt mainly with industrial folk music. She fled to Great Britain as a Jew in 1939 and became known for her work on the persecution of the Jews during the period of National Socialism in Berlin-Pankow.
Christian Funke is a German violinist, concertmaster and Professor for violin. Since 1987 he has been the conductor of the Bachorchester zu Leipzig.
The Regeln für die alphabetische Katalogisierung or RAK are a bibliographic cataloging set of rules. The RAK rules appeared for the first time in 1976 and became the dominant set of rules in Germany and Austria in the 1980s.
The Deutsches Musikinformationszentrum (MIZ) is the information and documentation institution of the Deutscher Musikrat. It has set itself the task of providing information about the structures, tasks and developments of the widely ramified musical life in Germany. To this end, it provides statistics, structural data and background information and offers guidance on current funding opportunities, specialist events and further education and training courses in the field of music.
Robert Ehrlich is a Northern Irish recorder player and university professor. From October 2015 until 2019, he was rector of the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin. Previously, he was rector of the University of Music and Theatre Leipzig from 2006 to 2015.
Paul Adolf Hirsch was a German industrialist. He was also a musician, bibliophile and musicologist who assembled the largest private music library in Europe. The Hirsch Collection is now housed at the British Library.
