Our Library

If you’re interested in the Nazi era in Munich and Bavaria and would like to do some in-depth research, our library is the place to go.

Search our holdings in OPAC

What our library offers

Our library holds more than 8,000 media ranging from standard works on the Nazi era to biographies, novels, magazines, graphic novels, and illustrations. Our wide range of publications covers the rise of Nazism, the Nazi era itself, and subsequent history. We also have more than a thousand Nazi-era books and magazines that you can use for special research projects.

Visitors have also access to two large digital media tablesa and 22 research terminals which allow all the texts, images, documents, and media in the exhibition Munich and National Socialism to be accessed in digital form. We also offer more in-depth information on individual Topics: From interviews with contemporary witnesses from Munich to a digital lexicon containing more than 900 articles by historians about various topics, places, and people (in German only).

Our library is a member of the Association of Memorial Site Libraries (AGGB).

Reference library, research, and lending

You can research our holdings via our own catalogue and also via the Bavarian Library Network (BVB).

The reference library contains around 3,000 books and a number of current periodicals in open-shelf access. You are also welcome to spend time in the library reading the Munich Documentation Center’s own publications.

The remainder of the books, especially those dating from before 1945, are kept in stack rooms. If you would like to order books from the stack rooms, please send an e-mail to bibliothek.nsdoku@muenchen.de stating your reason for ordering the book(s). When you order a book, please always give the shelf mark from the OPAC. Ordered books can be read only in the library.

Reserved books will be deposited in the reference library by arrangement once a week (usually on Wednesdays) and can be read there. You cannot take these books out of the building or order them through an inter-library loan.

View into the Library

A row of 24 touch screen terminals in front of a glass wall. — Research terminals, 2021 | © NS-Dokumentationszentrum München, photo: Connolly Weber Photography

A young man with headphones sitting at one of the touch screen terminals.

The Library of Burned Books

On May 10, 1933, many books and writings outlawed as “un-German” were burned by Nazi groups. The burned books included works by Jewish, Marxist, pacifist, and politically undesirable writers.

Examples of these burned books can be seen in the display cases. They are from the collection of Georg P. Salzmann, which is kept at the Ausgburg University Library. This library has made part of the Library of Burned Books available to the Munich Documentation Center for the History of Nationals Socialism on permanent loan.