The Afterlife of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg

On December 13, 1933, the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg left its home in Hamburg and went into exile in London, salvaging the books and image collection of its founder Aby Warburg. The scholarly arrival of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek in the intellectual life of the British metropolis, which, in 1944, finally resulted in the integration of the Warburg Institute in the University of London, started an ongoing process of intellectual exchange between German and English research traditions that is still going on today. Essays by internationally renowned scholars, among them many witnesses to the Warburg Institute's intellectual work of the early years, are dedicated to how the intellectual approach of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek contributed to the English scholar community. The publication also examines how the move to London affected the research of the K.B.W. and how it made the Warburg Institute one of the world's most important humanities research facilities.