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At the first glance I was a little disappointed when I entered the room of the new German Library at the Gurukul College, in Kilpauk. It is situated on the 3rd floor of the main building. A small, dark room with a number of tables and a few students sitting there silently with their dictionaries.

In March this year, all the books and even the shelves and curtains had been handed over to the Gurukul College by the Max Mueller Bhavan, the German institute in Chennai. Since then, all the books have been catalogued and sorted out by the new librarian, V Grace Nirmalakumari, who has spent four years in Germany and knows a lot about German literature, society and culture.

I slowly started roaming through around, looking at the shelves with books of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Erich Kaestner and Immanuel Kant. Happily, I discover their most famous works, their dramas, poetry books, novels and biographies. Goethe's 'Faustus' stands next to Schiller's 'Glocke' and a few rows on Kant's 'Critiq of the Pure Reason' marks the beginning of the philosophical section.

In other shelves I found works of famous European authors like William Shakespeare, Kurt Tucholsky or Fjodor Dostojewskij, geographical books about Germany, Europe and India. There is a section with reference books like the German 'Brockhaus'-serie, another section with books about history, arts, theatre and science and finally a small, colourful shelf full of children's books.

Most of the works are written in German or English. However, there also are some books in Tamil and Malayalam - and, consequently, there is a small section of dictionaries: English-German, English-Tamil, English-Malayalam, English-Sanskrit...

After Grace had shown me the many different sections of books, I had to revise my first impression: The number of works is not only bigger than I had presumed at first glance, it is above all very well chosen and varied.

The library includes books from the most important and some less-known German and European classical writers and philosophers and also offers information about German, European and Indian literature, geography, history and culture. Even the children's section contains books about Christmas celebrations in European countries and picture books with German cities and landscapes - which I'm sure is of interest not only for the youngest among us.

Unfortunately, the number of visitors is still very limited: Only two to three people, mostly students, use the library every day, which, according to Grace is due to "our inconvenient location. People have to get used to the new place. This might take some time..." In fact, I admit that even I had some difficulty finding the Gurukul College, although I had been given a map and a short description of the route.

Thus, it surely is partly because of the new, hidden location of the library. However, the number of visitors would probably increase if there were at least some modern books among all the 'Goethes' and 'Schillers'.

Undoubtedly, the classical works are not only very important to understand the German culture and history, but also quite interesting and often very beautiful. But equally difficult to understand, especially in the original language.

In addition, if you want to learn something about German mentality and what it is like today, you should not start with Kant's philosophical essays which, even for most Germans, stay a closed book till the end of their life.

You should maybe choose Patrick Suskind, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre or other modern, young, popular and sometimes controversial authors who tackle today's German society, its social and political problems or the situation in East and West Germany after the reunification in 1989. And if you are interested in the life of foreigners in Germany you can try Vladmir Kaminer - a Russian author from Berlin who, in his books, provides a deep wide knowledge of the German way of living and the situation of trying to deal with it as a foreigner.

Whether you like it or not, the ironical and critical books of the so-called "pop-literature" are very popular, especially with the German youth, at the moment. And they surely will give you a more realistic impression of Germany than the classical works. Not to mention the fact that they will be far easier to understand!

However, the library in the Gurukul College offers the possibility to order required books from abroad. Consequently, it is up to the people now whether the German Library will remain "only" an interesting archive or if it will become a modern, developing, vivid place where not only students come to learn about Germany's past but also its present.

Here is how you get there:
Gurukul Lutheran Theological College,
94, Purasawalkam High Road,
Kilpauk,
Chennai - 600010 

Gurukul German Library - Working Hours - 
Monday - Friday: 2.30 p.m.-6.30 p.m.
Saturday - 10.30 a.m-12.30 p.m.

Ania Zymelka

(Ania, born in Poland, now lives in north Germany with her family. She has just completed her schooling and is waiting to go to university. In the meantime, she decided she would also visit a country and learn about it. She will be exploring the economic, political, cultural, social and other links that Chennai has with Germany during her three-month stint in Chennaionline. Ed)