Leipzig

LVZ guest journalist from Thailand searches for Thai literature in Leipzig’s libraries.

Leipzig is called the city of books. As a person who deals every day with written words, I was looking forward to visiting a 600-year-old library that is considered one of the city’s landmarks. The Thai student Jirayuth Chanthanaphan, who is working for his doctorate in International Business at the University of Leipzig, invited me to a take a tour of the various libraries in the city.

Since I like to stay up late, I am especially fond of the library at the faculty of business: it is open round the clock. It’s a pity that my research at the PC showed that the library does not have a single book in the Thai language that I could have borrowed. Jirayuth comforted me by taking me to the university library of Leipzig, the Bibliotheca Albertina. I was so impressed by the library building that I read up after the visit who had built it. I discovered that the architect was named Arwed Rossbach and was fond of the Italian neo-renaissance style.

The time-honoured Bibliotheca Albertina possesses more than five million volumes, which are arranged in 7,700 sections. I bade Jirayuth to ask the librarian for me whether there are any Thai books among the over five million volumes. The librarian explained that he could only answer this question if we provided either a book title or author’s name. Jirayuth and I came up with the names of some Thai writers whom we thought might be well enough known. Unfortunately, their books are not part of the inventory of the Bibliotheca Albertina. Finally we suggested looking up “Thai dictionary.” The librarians were very helpful and eventually discovered that the library does own a Thai dictionary. Jirayuth and I were delighted at this news; however the dictionary was located in a different branch of the library. Although we were somewhat disappointed, we happily explored the floors of the Bibliotheca Albertina.

Many students were busy with very old, thick textbooks. I thought about how many books Leipzig must have had to be able to establish such a large library. That was as early as 1543, hence during the so-called Ayutthaya Period, one of the early Thai kingdoms. At that time, the Thai script had not yet been invented. The Bangkok Recorder, the first printed work in Thailand, was not published until 1848.