Library
The library of the Department of Musicology is a library containing over 50,000 books and music scores.
Opening hours: 20 April – 30 July 2026
Monday – Thursday: 11am – 3pm
The library remains on the first floor, with access via the library desk. With the exception of call numbers D and K, the library’s collection has been moved to a storage area and must be requested.
How to request items: verbally on site, by calling the reception desk (54-2790), by emailing the librarian, or by using the white postbox inside next to the front door. Required details: Shelf number and desired pick-up date.
The Team of the Library
Contact
Musikwissenschaftliches Seminar - Bibliothek - Augustinergasse 7 D-69117 Heidelberg
Librarian: Dipl.-Bibl. Birgit Becher
Phone: +49 / (0)6221 / 54- 2790
About the Library
Heidelberg University’s general catalog call number: MU
Interlibrary loan call number: 16/28
The library is open to the public.
The Musicology Seminar Library is a reference library (night and weekend loans are available to university members).
Copying options: Books (except reference works) may be copied at the nearby copy shop upon presentation of an ID card; however, sheet music (except piano reductions and study scores) may not be copied.
Collection (approximate Figures)
- Collection (approximate figures)
- 50,000 books and sheet music volumes (including part of the Thibaut estate, old hymnals, and numerous piano scores)
- 50 current periodicals
- 8,500 sound recordings (including 700 old shellac records)
- 1,500 microfilms
- 350 audiovisual media
Technical Facilities in the Library Rooms
Wi-Fi is available in all library rooms. To access it, you will need a VPN client from the URZ—which is also available on CD in the library lobby—or login credentials for eduroam. In addition, a computer is available in the library for internet research. It supports all standard Office applications, as well as music notation and ear training software. A flatbed scanner complements the equipment and allows you to create larger scans.
Hedwig Marx-Kirsch-Foundation
The Musicology Seminar at Heidelberg University was officially founded in 1921 in its current location at Augustinergasse 7. The foundation of the seminar library was established by a bequest from the Mannheim banker Hofrat Hermann Albert Marx in memory of his wife, the highly esteemed pianist Hedwig Marx-Kirsch (1884–1920), who had died at a young age. In addition to the financial endowment, the bequest provided for the permanent installation of the deceased’s music library within the seminar’s premises, comprising standard scholarly literature and an extensive collection of sheet music, including first editions from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as approximately five hundred opera piano scores. In 1922, Hermann Albert Marx, who was by then living in Berlin, was awarded the titles of honorary citizen and honorary senator of the university, and in 1923 he received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy. Marx, for his part, expressed his gratitude with a substantial additional donation. In early 1937, Marx voluntarily took his own life, two years after the Nuremberg Race Laws and one year before the pogroms of Kristallnacht. The foundation’s annual allocations and special funds remain available to the Heidelberg Seminar Library to this day, in memory of the founder and the artist whose name is associated with his foundation.
Private Donors
The Department of Musicology thanks
- Dr. Wolfgang Börner
- Prof. Dr. Christoph Broecker
- Dr. Freeman
- Klaus Gillessen
- Dr. Hans Hachmann
- Helmuth Kainer
- Angela Knapp
- Siegfried und Ruth Kraft
- Dr. Albert Lehr
- Inge Mecke
- Dr. Kurt Roy
- Birgit Stemmermann
- Elmar Ullrich
for various donations – a help, that supports our work and our students immensly. All sheet music and books purchased with these donations are marked with an ex libris (see above), so that every user, even in future generations, will know the source of their study materials.