The collection of works by Mahtumkuli will fill up funds of the Berlin library
The American Memorial Library located in the centre of area Kreuzberg of the German capital is one of the largest book-depositories of Berlin. The building was constructed during the period from 1950 to 1954. The half of the funds necessary for its erection, city authorities received under the McCloy Grant from the United States of America. The access opened for readers to all funds became the basic advantage of the library which earned in September, 1954. At that time the majority of book-depositories gave such access only to a small part of the works.
Since March, 1955, after adoption of law about libraries which allowed allocating from the budget money for financing improvement, purchase of the new equipment for storage of volumes and for the decision of some other important questions, the American Memorial Library turned into one of the most visited on in the city. After reunion of Germany funds of book collections were replenished as a result of its merge with the Berlin senatorial library. The part of books was transferred to its branch which is designated for children.
The employee of the youth information centre of the library Elena Ostrovsky got acquainted recently with Maria Markova who together with sister Bella moved to Germany from Turkmenistan in 1999.
Bella Nikolaevna transported to Berlin a part of her house library which consisted of about 900 books of different authors. Mahtumkuli was always one of the favourite poets of the woman. His verses were stored in the collection of sisters in three languages: German, Russian and Turkmen. There was a collection of forty works by the poet translated into German published in Leipzig in 1879 by Hungarian scholar Vámbéry. The scientist got acquainted with creativity of Mahtumkuli in 1863 during the travel to the East. Collections of poems of the poet, according to the scientist, «took the first place after the Koran with Turkmens».
In Russian the collection of works of Mahtumkuli which soon becomes the property of the Berlin library, was published in 1960 in Ashkhabad. Verses of the poet were translated for the collection by Arseny Tarkovsky.
The anthology in the Turkmen language, consisting of 197 poems, contains works which were published for the first time in 1926. Writer Berdi Kerbabaev took part in preparation of the book for printing then.
At the end of the last year the proprietress of unique volumes, unfortunately, died, and Maria Nikolaevna made a decision to transfer the edition as a gift to the American Memorial Library of Berlin.
Roman TEPLYAKOV
