City library

The Stadtbücherei (municipal library) will shine in new splendour after its relocation to the Domplatz next spring. But it is already well positioned to take on a central role during Tangente.

The multifunctional library sees itself as an intervention in the public outdoor and indoor space by providing information, knowledge and digital infrastructure on a long-term, low-threshold and free basis, sharing it for the collective benefit.

The concept of the public library is geared towards permanence. On one hand, by providing a programme – from expert talks to readings with authors to workshops and training courses to discussion rounds. But on the other hand, it also means sharpening the focus on urgent, contemporary issues such as environmental protection and resource conservation, sustainability and renewability. One topic that the library takes up again and again is to place remembrance culture in the context of current social developments. Events on that topic act as a bridge between the past and the present to promote reflection on social processes and offer orientation for the future. All this contributes to encouraging social participation, strengthening media and discourse skills and promoting the culture of dialogue.

The public library is a place of vibrant democ­racy, vivid dialogue and lively diversity, and sees itself as a pioneering and stabilising track for the wheel of time, as it were, a constant and – imagined geometri­cally – a tangent touching everyone which can always be taken by its word.