The library for the Protestant preachers and teachers in Greifswald, who together formed the Spiritual Ministry and were jointly responsible for their tasks, was established in 1602.

According to the Pomeranian Church Ordinance of Johannes Bugenhagen (1485-1588) of 1535, Duke Philip I. of Pommern-Wolgast had a church in Greifswald. After the dissolution of the two monasteries of Greifswald, the Gray Monastery of the Franciscans and the Black Monastery of the Dominicans, Duke Philip I of Pomerania-Wolgast urged in 1558 in a visitation process to erect a good communal library, for the whole city in order to save the old book treasures and to acquire books with a reformatory orientation. The city council was reluctant to accept this because it was very critical of the establishment of a library in St. Mary's Church with the books of the Dominican monastery before 1545, for which it had also acquired the works of Luther. There had been too much controversy about the use of the monastery, too much wasted time and it had been set up without order. After further pressure, the Council then decided to promote a library intended for the church servants, for whom they themselves assumed responsibility, and to unite the two monastery libraries in it. In 1599 the books of the Grey Monastery, which had remained unused in the library room there, were inventoried, transferred to St. Nicholas' Church in 1602 and combined with most of the books from St. Mary's Church and the small collection of books from St. Nicholas' Church begun by Magister Petrus Sager (*1595). The preserved inventory from 1602 with title imprint is the document of this foundation.

Address: 

Bibliothek des Geistlichen Ministeriums Greifswald
Domstraße 13
17489 Greifswald
Phone: +49 3834 2627
Fax: +49 3834 799422
E-Mail: ust.nikolai@kirchenkreis-greifswald.de
www.dom-greifswald.de