Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Baden State Library traces its origins to around 1500, when the margraves of Baden maintained a personal book collection at Pforzheim. After the foundation of Karlsruhe in 1715, the collection eventually relocated to the new residence there, and by 1872 the library was incorporated into state administration.
An air raid in 1942 destroyed almost the complete holdings of the library, burning 360,000 volumes along with the library building itself. After the destruction, the institution was housed in the building of the Generallandesarchiv Baden-Württemberg while a new facility was built.
The BLB holds Manuscript C of the Nibelungenlied, one of the famous medieval German epic's key surviving manuscripts. It came to the library as part of the German manuscripts from the Fürstlich Fürstenbergischen Hofbibliothek zu Donaueschingen.
As of 2023, the Baden State Library holds about 2.9 million media items. Its 2022 special collections statistics include 4,302 manuscripts, 5,503 music manuscripts, 75,042 autographs, 1,369 incunabula, 54,454 maps, and 72,445 musical scores.
The Baden State Library is currently located on the Erbprinzenstraße in Karlsruhe, Germany. The library moved to this building in 1991, having previously occupied a building at the Nymphengarten completed in 1964.
The BLB holds more than 200 literary legacies from significant figures of Baden, including writers and musicians such as Reinhold Schneider, Johann Peter Hebel, and Emil Strauß. Academic paper collections also preserve correspondences linked to figures including Paul Celan and Elias Canetti.