A Visit to the State Library Berlin
In the course of the Berlin based workshop which took place for two weeks at the end of August and beginning of September 2023, members of both the Melbourne and Berlin team went to visit the State Library on a sunny and warm afternoon on 04 September. Having found a welcome sanctuary in the shade of the inner yard of the State Library Unter den Linden, the group was warmly welcomed by Wolfgang Crom, head of the maps department. Through back doors and hallways, he led the way to the map reading room, located in the upper part of the building where he, as well as his colleague Veronika Mantel from the Manuscripts and Early Printed Books department, had prepared the books and documents we had asked to see prior to our visit.
Before we dived headfirst into the task of looking at the carefully prepared items, the team presented the project’s intentions and the importance of the collections at the State Library to the overall project to both Wolfgang Crom and Veronika Mantel. A special emphasis thereby lay on the project’s overarching goal to return knowledge back to source communities.


The books which had been prepared for us that afternoon originally belonged to Blandowski’s private collection. They contain printed versions of illustrations that had been used during the Murray-Darling expedition to show to First Peoples in order to start conversations and to assemble knowledge. What is more the books in the collection also contain handwritten words and notes made by Blandowski that the team was most interested in since it is exactly the work that the project tries to achieve – to re-assemble information that can then be returned to source communities along the Murray and Darling River. These words and notes are especially valuable since Blandowski did not leave diaries or notes after his death and the bits and pieces of information are spread over different archives all over the world with the State Library being one of them.

A highlight which none of the team members had seen up until that point was a big map Blandowski had drawn on sailing cloth and used for conferences in Europe after returning from Australia. Using different colours, Blandowski had included the colonial borders of the time and marked mainly the German settlements highlighting the European worldview embedded in the creation process as well as the European audience the map was intended for. However, Wolfgang Crom pointed out to us that Blandowski had additionally charted growing regions on the sailing cloth, turning it into a species distribution area map – a novelty at the time since species were usually not included in map-making. Even more surprising was the research we learned about regarding the colours used to draw the map. The findings show that the pigments used to indicate mineral deposits on the map might derive from the very same minerals they mark. This suggests the exciting possibility that Blandowski’s sailing cloth map might be the first European map that uses Country to represent Country.

An even more surprising aspect of the map we learned about concerns the colours used to draw the map. Research conducted on the colours revealed that the pigments marking mineral deposits on the map may contain the same minerals as they are marking on the map.

As a general pattern during these two workshop weeks, we agreed that much more time would need to be spent on the map, the books, notes and comments. Three hours in one afternoon were just not enough to even scratch the surface of the wealth of information contained in these resources. In the end, we left excited and happy about the new tasks and steps the Berlin team would take onboard while at the same time feeling slightly unsatisfied and sad about having to leave the task behind for another time.
By Laura Boehm
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
lauraboehm (June 18, 2024). A Visit to the State Library Berlin. Berlin's Australian Archive. Retrieved July 15, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/11ufj