The library was founded in 1915 in Berlin by coffee substitute entrepreneur Richard Frank as a private collection. Its purpose was to document the First World War by collecting unconventional media like leaflets, posters and brochures. After the war, the collection moved to Schloss Rosenstein in Stuttgart and was opened as Weltkriegsbücherei to the public in 1921. In September 1944, the library was almost completely destroyed in an Allied air raid on Stuttgart. In 1948 the Weltkriegsbücherei was renamed Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, short BfZ. The library moved into the new building of the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in 1951. After being an independent institution for several decades it finally became a department of the Württemberg State Library in 2000. The library's collection focuses on military history, as well as civil wars, the history of genocide and state terrorism, foreign affairs, security policy, and peace and conflict studies. The collection currently consists of more than 400,000 books and 480 subscribed journals. It published numerous publications and organizes regular public lectures. The library organizes a series of lectures on topics of contemporary history. Since January 2020, the lectures have been recorded in cooperation with the Gerda Henkel Stiftung and made available on the online portal .
Special collections
The collection of books and periodicals is complemented by three special collections:
Zeit der Weltkriege includes photographs, posters, leaflets, and archives of personal-documents such as memoirs, diaries, and letters from combatants and civilians of both World Wars.
Marine comprises a collection of around 500,000 photographs of warships and merchant ships from all over the world between 1850 and 1990, as well as a collection of naval history with marine charts, construction drawings, blueprints and text documents.
Neue Soziale Bewegungen focuses on the domestic political disputes in the Federal Republic of Germany since the 1960s. The collection comprises the so-called grey literature as well as posters.
Own editions
Schriften der Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte / First series Volume 1.1962 – 28.1990;
Chronology of the War at Sea: 1939–1945 / Jürgen Rohwer ; Gerhard Hümmelchen. – 3. rev.. ed. London: Chatham, 2005,
100 Jahre Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte: 1915 – 2015 / Christian Westerhoff. - Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, 2015,
1914 - 1918, Orages de papier : les collections de guerre des bibliothèques / ed. by Christophe Didier; Christian Baechler. – Paris : Somogy, Éd. d'Art; Strasbourg: BNU, Bibl. Nat. Univ., 2008,,
