alt.hn

3/6/2026 at 12:20:40 PM

70k Books Found in Hidden Library in This Germany Home (2023)

 https://bookstr.com/article/70k-books-found-in-hidden-library-in-this-germany-home/

by eatonphil

3/6/2026 at 5:03:46 PM

I'm not sure about other countries. There is a culture refuse to throw away books in Germany. People would put on the streets for free (I found two interesting books with this method).

by lava_pidgeon

3/6/2026 at 8:25:06 PM

> People would put on the streets for free

In the US people put "Little Free Libraries" in their yards. They're all over the place in the Seattle area.

by WalterBright

3/7/2026 at 4:57:13 AM

I've seen them in Scandinavian countries as well, glass-fronted cases in front of houses or on trees. There's a few here (not Scandinavia) too, sometimes old refridgerators because they're pretty well sealed against the elements.

by pseudohadamard

3/6/2026 at 8:57:46 PM

Some dude was giving away books after his talk at the CPP Users Group in Redmond, got some good sci-fi.

by sitkack

3/6/2026 at 9:06:27 PM

That was me!

by WalterBright

3/6/2026 at 6:04:58 PM

German book culture is great! When he was in Karlsruhe to profile Peter Sloterdijk, The New Yorker reporter Thomas Meaney seemed surprised by it:

"Over the summer, ordinary Germans who spotted his [Peter Sloterdijk] books in my hands engaged me in conversation on trains, in coffee shops, at universities, and in bookshops." [0]

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/26/a-celebrity-ph...

by gom_jabbar

3/7/2026 at 3:02:09 AM

Sloterdijk is a rare celebrity philosopher, popularized by his many TV spots. However, whether people actually know his philosophy as well as they know his face is a different story altogether.

by HackerNewt-doms

3/7/2026 at 6:24:23 PM

Agreed. Even assuming that most people aren't deeply familiar with his philosophy, it's still nice for a culture to have something like a celebrity philosopher.

by gom_jabbar

3/6/2026 at 9:18:31 PM

wild, when I went to germany I only saw kebabs and barber shops

and a rave

by msskskkd

3/7/2026 at 3:19:27 AM

> kebabs and barber shops

Living in Germany, I can confirm that it’s part of the everyday scenery here (Stadtbild).

> and a rave

I can confirm that techno culture is a deeply rooted part of the urban landscape. However, the era of massive, free street parades effectively ended with the 2010 Love Parade tragedy in Duisburg, where a crowd crush claimed many lives. For years, such large-scale public raves vanished due to strict safety regulations. It’s only recently that we’ve seen a revival with 'Rave The Planet' in Berlin—an event led by the original Love Parade founders that attempts to bring techno back to the streets, though under much tighter organizational control.

by HackerNewt-doms

3/8/2026 at 11:03:40 PM

At that time I used to visit Germany and take part to many Carneval open parties. I intended to even participate in a Love Parade. How did the accident affected other gatherings since then? Open street concerts, Saturday night club districts, Carneval?

by tsoukase

3/7/2026 at 8:03:51 AM

I found some nice books in German paper recycling containers. Including a nice old etymology dictionary that I treasured

by bananzamba

3/6/2026 at 8:43:48 PM

Every now and then I need to go to the recycling station here in Denmark. They have a special container/dumpster just for books. The second hand shops will take a small quantum of books, stores the buy and resell old DVDs, games, records, porn, comics and what-not, no longer buy books as there's no profit in second hand books. The dumpster is always overflowing with books, books that you're not allowed to take.

Germany is a lot more conservative than Denmark, so I wouldn't be surprised if they where more reluctant to throw out books. On the other hand, other than myself, how many people really want to read random novels from the 1970s or a 140 year old book on economics, telling you that Trump is wrong about tariffs?

Maybe with the advent of LLMs, old books will get a resurgence. If a book is printed in the 20th century, at least I know it's written by humans.

by mrweasel

3/6/2026 at 8:16:10 PM

I mean what are they going to do? Burn them? Oh wait...

by welcome_dragon

3/7/2026 at 3:31:40 AM

In Germany, there was a trend of setting up public bookcases in town squares where passers-by could drop off or take books. But as things go, after a while, they slowly started to go out of fashion. Since then, kebab shops and barbershops have become a more common sight in the cityscape (Stadtbild).

by HackerNewt-doms

3/7/2026 at 6:08:33 AM

They are still common and popular in many places and I have found cool stuff there often.

by Circlebit

3/7/2026 at 10:01:14 AM

I also regularly visit the 3-4 that are within 10 minutes walking distance from my place. It's fun to see that they have slowly become more "specialized"; for example, English books typically appear in only one of them.

by zvr

3/7/2026 at 8:12:37 AM

In the US they're often called "Little Free Libraries" and you can join groups around them: https://littlefreelibrary.org

by bombcar

3/8/2026 at 12:28:07 AM

They didn’t go out of fashion. It’s just that some people emptied them to sell the books on flea markets, sometimes drunk people used those for their “business”; and sometimes, kids set them on fire. And this was just in a rather small town.

by mbirth

3/6/2026 at 5:28:55 PM

The slanted library lining the attic of his home is to die for. I could easily see this happening to myself in my old age. I love books and it's quite a challenge to keep and collect all of them. Why haven't I thought of slanted ceiling book cases before? And 70k books by the time you are 88, that's only 1000 books per year after age 18. Okay that does work out to more than 3 books a day, so reading every single one is challenging, but in your old age an unread book is something to look forward to. I'm sad to read that he's passed away.

by skyberrys

3/6/2026 at 8:28:57 PM

What is very surprising for me is the height of the books. If you look closer at the picture, seems that most of the books are the same height, so that's very strange for any book collection except if he was collecting the same book editors or... Am missing something ?

by geniium

3/6/2026 at 9:03:37 PM

I think the answer is in the article text "all meticulously sectioned by publisher". Book sizes differ somewhat between publishers, but each publisher tends to only print books in a few standard sizes. For the paperback editions this is even more reduced, it usually looks to me like all paperbacks from one publisher are the same size.

by blywi

3/7/2026 at 12:07:14 AM

I never undertood why publishers couldn't agree in 5 different sizes or so.

by kwanbix

3/7/2026 at 1:31:08 AM

Because they are an industry, aren’t they? Printing, binding, cover productions, transportation and storage, all that are much easier and much cheaper with a few standardized sizes.

by sinuhe69

3/7/2026 at 1:46:20 AM

That is exactly what I said.

by kwanbix

3/7/2026 at 5:00:09 AM

They're German publishers, they probably all adhere strictly to DIN sizing.

by pseudohadamard

3/6/2026 at 9:25:49 PM

Space savings... when you get to those numbers it starts to matter and I think he just saw a shortcut because the same format books store more compactly together and usually print the same authors.

by jacquesm

3/6/2026 at 9:39:55 PM

The infamous Bookshelf of Procrustes where every book fits - too tall books have their tops lopped off and too short books are stretched out.

by IncreasePosts

3/6/2026 at 8:36:48 PM

That was the first thing I noticed - a lot of those book covers look shockingly uniform. Maybe there’s more standardization in localized German publishers?

by vunderba

3/6/2026 at 9:00:40 PM

The article noted that at least some of the sections had been organized by publisher, so that could increase the uniformity within those sections.

Similarly, sorting and measuring all the books by height and weight may have been a part of the project of planning the shelves in the first place. It does look like an attempt at efficient packing, which I suppose you would need to keep that many books in that house and relates to the structural engineer's surprise that the the weight was well distributed as well. (Professional libraries have made mistakes in planning the weight of shelves because books are heavier than you think they are, especially when shelved. That was an interesting finding.)

All of that implied work is more shame that the likeliest outcome after the owner's passing is that the books will be separated from the shelves and the house. It almost feels like the whole thing should have been preserved as a museum. I suppose it helps that there will at least be photos and notes about it like this article.

by WorldMaker

3/7/2026 at 5:09:06 AM

Particularly if you get series like the 6.022e23 identically-bound Lesezirkel books or the dtv or rororo ones in standard Taschenbuch format, you'd get a wall of identical volumes.

by pseudohadamard

3/6/2026 at 10:49:16 PM

I think he sorted them by height. If you look closer you can see also shelfs with different sized books that were too non standard.

by lukan

3/6/2026 at 8:32:04 PM

Yah, I noticed that, too.

by WalterBright

3/6/2026 at 8:20:58 PM

I’m not familiar with the “modern car” unit of weight.

“With an assumed average weight of 300 to 400 grams per book, the weight of around 15 modern cars is currently stored in Schröder’s detached house.”

350 grams x 70,000 books = 24,500 kg. About 54,000 lbs.

Can a ‘typical’ house bear that weight??

by WalterGR

3/6/2026 at 8:52:58 PM

Depends on the size of the house and both the flooring and the foundation. Just before that the article mentions that a structural engineer was consulted and said it was fine, and you get a lot of mileage out of having most of the weight connected to the frame.

by Matticus_Rex

3/6/2026 at 9:13:13 PM

4.90 x the mass of an African bull elephant 2.04 x the mass of a London double decker bus 0.122 x the mass of a blue whale

http://howmanyelephants.co.uk/

by hermitcrab

3/6/2026 at 9:17:45 PM

Why the article didn’t express it in units of blue whale is beyond me.

by WalterGR

3/6/2026 at 8:52:58 PM

> Can a ‘typical’ house bear that weight??

Modern builds codes require living areas to support 30-40 pounds per square foot live load so while you wouldn't want to pack it all in a 1k sq ft second floor apartment, it's doable in a larger space.

If it's an old house that was overbuilt before building codes were optimized, chances are it can support it. It also matters a lot whether this is an upper story, or just a single floor detached house sitting on a concrete foundation.

by throwup238

3/7/2026 at 10:19:33 PM

A square foot is bigger than the area used by a person standing and people mostly weigh more than 40 pounds so that seems unlikely to be the design criteria for places people walk.

by JonChesterfield

3/8/2026 at 3:31:32 AM

You're confusing the concept of concentrated load and the uniform load for a floor or room. See page 7 of the HUD guide [1], but local building codes may be stricter. Materials like floor boards must be able to support 250-300 lbs in the center between supports, but that's very different from a whole floor supporting 250 psf.

If you manage to squeeze 400 people weighing an average 150 lbs each into the average 400 sq ft apartment room, it will probably suffer structural damage unless it's a on a solid ground floor. That's one of the factors that goes into calculating the room and building "occupancy limit" signs you see in public places.

[1] https://www.huduser.gov/publications/pdf/res2000_2.pdf

by throwup238

3/6/2026 at 5:53:16 PM

This reminds me of Peter Sloterdijk describing books as "bewusstseinserweiternde Drogen" (mind-expanding drugs) and "Waffen" (weapons) in his working library. [0]

[0] https://youtu.be/Wn5EgkuQb5U?t=293 (4:53)

by gom_jabbar

3/7/2026 at 4:35:01 AM

Very Very True!

I like to browse/read/study books on various subjects (have a large collection of my own) which lead me to the realization that it is only by reading books and getting exposed to new ideas that one can engage in better self-reflection leading to a more comprehensive self-awareness.

by rramadass

3/7/2026 at 6:17:46 PM

Absolutely. One of my favorite books about the power of books is The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (2011) by Stephen Greenblatt. It tells the story of the rediscovery of Lucretius's poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), which was assumed lost.

by gom_jabbar

3/8/2026 at 7:03:33 AM

Nice. I had long wanted to read Lucretius' work and try and understand his philosophy/arguments. But a couple of translations that i looked at were in verse form and hence i did not followup on it. I am less interested in his poetry/form and more in his ideas. Maybe i should start with the book that you mention.

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swerve

De rerum natura - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura

PS: I just submitted this which you might also find interesting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47295304

by rramadass

3/8/2026 at 6:18:12 PM

If you're only interested in his ideas, The Swerve summarizes them on pages 185-199 (1st edition).

by gom_jabbar

3/9/2026 at 4:21:12 AM

That certainly is helpful; a TLDR of his ideas before tackling his work in entirety (a rather difficult endeavour).

A quick Google search gave me exactly what you pointed out i.e. Chapter 8, Pages 182-202 which somebody had uploaded.

by rramadass

3/6/2026 at 5:32:38 PM

I went to a local estate sale of a professor, whose entire downstairs (4+ rooms) was filled with bookshelves full of books. They were well organized by topic, and covered a range of topics (math, science, health, fiction, biographies, etc). It was more functional than artistic, comparing it to the pics in this post, but the number of books was probably the same order of magnitude as our local public library’s collection, or a small bookstore.

I went at the end of the 2 or 3 day sale, and it still looked full. They were charging fair prices for the used books, but were going to pay to haul the remainder to the dump. I’m still unhappy about the waste, even though I mostly understand it.

by e28eta

3/6/2026 at 8:21:18 PM

Disheartening to say the least. A cache like that would sure to a have single volume that would more than pay for the price to pay to have them moved and stored for a year… the idea that there are countless volumes of that caliber most likely in a collection like that means whomever is responsible is literally throwing money away… based on what you’ve described I could easily see a collection like that fetching at least a hundred thousand dollars, maybe substantially more.

by wizardforhire

3/6/2026 at 8:26:42 PM

The thrift stores take them. No need for the dump.

by WalterBright

3/6/2026 at 10:45:49 PM

My experience was different. Even the local library was dumping a lot of donated books, which was surprising since they did have book sales.

by kwertyoowiyop

3/7/2026 at 1:23:11 AM

Frankly, most titles are junk, like most TV shows are junk.

by WalterBright

3/7/2026 at 8:47:39 AM

Holy cow, I just clicked the link and saw the photo. My first thought isn’t about literature—it’s about structural engineering. Look at those sloped ceilings! Having thousands of books literally hanging over your head while you work... that’s a lot of trust in those wooden beams. One small earthquake and you’re buried in a 35-ton paper tomb. It looks amazing, but man, it’s also terrifying.

by genve

3/6/2026 at 8:31:39 PM

My dad left me several thousand books. Mostly about airplanes and warfare.

by WalterBright

3/6/2026 at 8:52:05 PM

If you have a library that you want to keep out of the landfill, your job is not storing them, but convincing another human being (who's younger than you) that the books are of value. If no one you know has ever borrowed or expressed interest in them, then the shelf you relegate them to is as good as the landfill.

by elevation

3/6/2026 at 9:03:04 PM

I keep the ones I want and sell the rest to used bookstores or give them to the thrift stores.

I tried selling some on Amazon. That doesn't work at all.

by WalterBright

3/7/2026 at 1:55:21 AM

As a buyer, I find buying used books on eBay much better than buying used books on Amazon.

by rationalist

3/7/2026 at 2:03:49 AM

I find the prices + shipping about the same.

Where ebay gets ahead is buying a box of books, rather than individual books.

by WalterBright

3/6/2026 at 9:11:16 PM

...do you still have any?

by rrr_oh_man

3/6/2026 at 9:24:50 PM

only ones I want to keep

by WalterBright

3/6/2026 at 8:39:15 PM

I wish they had talked a bit more about how he managed to re-read any of the books, because from the pictures a great deal of them seemed like they were rather inaccessible.

by vunderba

3/6/2026 at 9:15:50 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku

by stagger87

3/6/2026 at 9:41:49 PM

A friend of mine has mad Jenga style stacks of manga all over his flat and I will be forwarding this word to him.

by vunderba

3/6/2026 at 9:04:32 PM

He probably didn't even read all of them once. Books are like wine: you don't have to drink all the wine you have before buying more.

by black6

3/7/2026 at 12:45:22 PM

Every time I move, I have to get rid of some books — I’ve probably thrown away a whole truckload by now.

by HiiDee

3/6/2026 at 9:27:14 PM

Awesome. I bet the acoustics of the house are very interesting.

by chickensong

3/7/2026 at 5:02:29 AM

So, how many of them has he read?

by Borrible

3/6/2026 at 9:04:45 PM

7k for 70,000 books sounds insane.

by nurettin

3/6/2026 at 5:13:54 PM

But you nobody can read 70k books, so what was the point? He had a library nobody knew about, full of books he hadn't read.

That's not a library, it's an imitation of a library built by someone who doesn't understand what a library is for.

by mjd

3/6/2026 at 7:52:08 PM

Not every book in a library is meant to be read like a novel. Some books need only be referenced, briefly and periodically.

by gnatman

3/6/2026 at 11:03:47 PM

The article doesn't say much about what was in the library, but it does mention that it contained 10,000 thriller novels.

by mjd

3/7/2026 at 3:42:10 AM

"It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.

"There are things in life that we need to always have plenty of supplies, even if we will only use a small portion.

"If, for example, we consider books as medicine, we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the 'medicine closet' and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That's why you should always have a nutrition choice!

"Those who buy only one book, read only that one and then get rid of it. They simply apply the consumer mentality to books, that is, they consider them a consumer product, a good. Those who love books know that a book is anything but a commodity."

-- Umberto Eco

For some great quotes; see Umberto Eco on Writing, Reading, Books, and More - https://bigother.com/2026/01/05/umberto-eco-on-writing-readi...

This is an intriguing essay by Eco as part of a book review; On Unread Books - https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/11/02/on-unread-boo...

by rramadass

3/6/2026 at 8:22:15 PM

There’s an interesting term from the book the Black Swan, an antilibrary, which gains value from books that haven’t been read, but are at hand. Essentially resources for new ideas.

by craftwerk

3/7/2026 at 3:31:22 AM

“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore, professore dottore Eco, what a library you have ! How many of these books have you read?” and the others - a very small minority - who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you don’t know as your financial means, mortgage rates and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menancingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.”

― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

by rramadass

3/6/2026 at 6:32:19 PM

Hoarding/archiving/collecting is quite fun. I don't think it's a stretch to say he likely read more then the average person, and from his own collection too!

by pixelmelt

3/6/2026 at 9:23:12 PM

That's roughly on par with saying nobody needs the internet or a library at all.

Back the 1920s having a personal library was fairly common for people with more than two dimes, they had this thing called an 'Ex Libris' which roughly translates as 'from the books of'. This was a little piece of paper, often very nicely designed that you glued to the first page of a book and then you could borrow it freely and sooner or later it would find its way back to you.

This was the rough equivalent of wikipedia, only a lot slower and less convenient. Then encyclopedias (which existed for a long time) became larger and larger, I had one from the 18th century that got lost in a move but it was a work of art, so much effort had gone into making that. The encyclopedias of the newer ages were however far larger and covered more subjects. Ever year a new batch of pages or the occasional reprint was the norm. And then personal libraries went the way of the dodo. Every time one of my family members dies there is always the same question: what will happen to all the books. These people - and me too - spent a fortune on their books, untold tens of thousands over a lifetime. They were well read, not 'browsing' information but actually reading - and occasionally writing.

That library in the article is exceptional in one way: that it does not look like it was shared. But I can totally sympathize: some people are focused on the number of digits on their bank account, others derive their sense of wealth and accomplishment from their bookshelves. I don't own any books I have not read, but I do understand people buying books that they intend to read at some point but never get around to.

As these things go, I'd be happy have a million more book hoarders, even if they don't read them all, so they can be passed on to the next generation of booklovers, assuming they can still be found.

by jacquesm

3/7/2026 at 3:49:57 AM

> As these things go, I'd be happy have a million more book hoarders, even if they don't read them all, so they can be passed on to the next generation of booklovers,

Exactly my sentiment!

Everything today has been tied down to making money or gaining name/fame. There is no concept of studying "knowledge for knowledge's sake". And yet everybody knows that it is precisely only the latter mindset which has enabled Humans to build all their grand civilizations and technologies.

by rramadass

3/6/2026 at 7:07:41 PM

[I had to do the calculation: 70K/365 ~= 192 years, i.e. 2.5 or 3 books per day assuming a standard lifetime. Yep, it's a lot of books.]

by gus_massa