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professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Religion and at the same time
assumed the duties of University Librarian. He held these posts
simultaneously for the next forty years, allowing for continuity in the
acquisition of Oriental literature. The groundwork was then laid for
concerted efforts to increase our oriental holdings. Growth was no
longer as haphazard as it had appeared to be up to that point. Also
during Roth's tenure of office many gifts of Oriental books from all
over the world reached Tuebingen. His own awareness as an
Orientalist of relevant publications also accounts for many more
acquisitions. He mentions in one report that much Sanskrit literature
had been received from India 'which would not otherwise have
come to Europe'. As already mentioned above, he published a much
enlarged catalogue of Indian manuscripts in the University Library
in 1865 and purchased a substantial number of Arabic manuscripts,
including the well-known Wetzstein collection.
By 1850 the library contained in total some 200,000 volumes,
with an additional 50,000 dissertations and writings and some 2,000
manuscripts. George Heinrich Ewald (1803 – 1875), writing in his
manuscript catalogue published in 1839, described the oriental part
of this collection of manuscripts as being probably the most valuable
one. About this same period, Karl Kluepfel, an assistant librarian,
wrote in his history of the university library. 'As far as the extent of
its accommodation and the number of its books is concerned, this
(the library of Tuebingen University) is currently one of the largest
libraries in Germany and, after Goettingen, the largest of all the
university libraries'. Taken overall, the oriental section experienced
a rapid expansion in the 19th century. From the middle of the
century onward a concerted effort was made for the first time to
increase its overall book-holdings.
Many donations of manuscripts and monographs have to
remain unmentioned, but because these donations were so
numerous and because an Orientalist headed the University Library
for the last half of the nineteenth century there was every reason for
the Emergency Association of German Research (Notgemeinschaft
der Deutschen Wissenschaft) to request this library to continue
building up its oriental collection with their financial help.
One of the most remarkable programmes for literature
collecting during the 20th century in Germany has been the special
