Sodann library in Staucha plagued by money worries

The Peter Sodann Library in Staucha in the district of Meißen is facing an uncertain future. The library has been organized as a non-profit registered cooperative since 2018. However, the institution lacks any funding from the federal government or the Free State of Saxony, laments Supervisory Board member Bernd Pawlowski. The library relies on donations - and these are also "rapidly" declining.

Donations are no longer enough

"Our problems are the same as everyone else's," says Sodann's widow Cornelia Brenner-Sodann. There is no money for staff to continue sifting through and cataloging the books. There is still some income from an antiquarian bookshop. But that hardly helps.

The actor Peter Sodann (1936 - 2024) had the idea for the collection. He wanted to save the GDR books from being destroyed and forgotten. But since his death last year, the library has been faced with the big question of what to do next. Sodann built up the collection during the fall of communism from 1990, and in 2012 he moved the books to the remote Staucha manor.

"We would need small, continuous support to create two jobs on a minimum wage basis," says Pawlowski. 100,000 euros a year would be ideal, 50,000 to 70,000 euros would also help. All talks with public authorities have so far come to nothing, says Pawlowski. The cooperative currently has two employees, "who we finance by hook or by crook through donations", says Pawlowski.

Free state sees no responsibility

The Saxon Ministry of Culture explained on request that the commitment with which Peter Sodann had collected the books as a private collector was remarkable and extremely respectable. However, he had not acted on behalf of the state. The ministry confirmed that representatives of the library had been contacting the federal and state governments for many years. "From our point of view, the respective arguments have been repeatedly exchanged and comprehensively discussed."

No public library in Saxony receives institutional funding from the state, according to the ministry. At most, project funding is conceivable under certain conditions.