Cousins, Book Burning, History, and Destruction: Library tourism in Leuven

When leaving the U.K., I wasn’t prepared for the fact that I would be visiting one more library, during my travels, a library where my cousin had studied while he attended Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), a publicly-funded Catholic research university in Leuven, Belgium.

Note: This serves as third and final part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, and the second part, published last week, about my visit to the British Museum and British Library. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later.

On August 4th, I visited, with my dad and my cousin, Peder Schaefer, a freelance journalist and budding global historian, who currently lives in Belgium, the Central Library of KU Leuven. Peter recently finished his European Studies degree at KU Leuven. The aforementioned university has over ten libraries, plus special collections for preserving the library’s history, and with millions of volumes. You need a special ticket to get in for the tour, which you have to pay a nominal fee for. It is open to students, who can pass through by using their ID card, like Peder. A pamphlet I picked up advertises a coffee corner, coworking space, information desk, and university shop, and notes the library is also open on Saturday.

Although I did not walk up the stairs of the tower of this research and heritage library, known as C-Bib by students or Universiteitsbibliotheek Leuven, I learned about this academic library’s history. It was burned down in the first month of 1914 by German soldiers, with only “a few burnt pages and a number of completely charred books were found,” leading to international outrage. After the war, U.S. financial support and the efforts of then-chair of the Commission for Relief of Belgium, Herbert Hoover, helped rebuild the library.

In May 1940, during exchange of artillery fire between the British and Germany forces, the library was burned down again. Only 15,000, of the more than 900,000 books, survived. The fire was so hot that it melted “reinforced concrete glass floors of the stockrooms…and poured into the cellars”! While the fire continues to be “shrouded in mystery” to this day, the library came back, after the Second World War. It re-opened by 1951. One display, inside of one of the reading rooms, contains a book charred during the fire, physical proof of the damage, a lingering reminder of those who try to destroy knowledge.
Central Library of KU Leuven as seen from Mgr. Ladeuze Square, taken on August 4, 2025 (My photograph)
C-Bib is a tourist attraction, described as a “war memorial” and a building with a lot of character, with a turbulent history. In fact, the library’s collections were split in 1970 between a French speaking university (UCLouvain) and a Dutch-speaking one (KU Leuven). Otherwise, you can have a panoramic view of Leuven itself from the library tower.

You need a special ticket to go up to the tower, which I did not have during my visit. While there, I also entered a room dedicated to the Konshi chair of Japanese studies and many students quietly studying. Like every place I visited while in Europe, they asked for donations, with suggestions of five, ten, or fifteen Euros. There are many other academic libraries within Leuven, including at the Old University of Leuven and State University of Leuven. Adding to this are other public, national, religious, private, or otherwise academic libraries inside Belgium.

One of these is the KBR (Royal Library of Belgium), which collects all Belgian publications, while aiming to manage, study, and preserve the country’s “extensive cultural and historical heritage.” One item it has, controversially, is a machete from the Congo region, with the insignia of the Congo Free State, the name for the Belgian colony from 1885 to 1908. It was gifted to the library with unknown provenance, but is likely from Belgian colonist Adolphe-Alfred Mahieu. As such, it has a tenuous relationship with the KBR as a result. This is the kind of iron sword used to murder Congolese people during Belgium’s brutal colonial rule, lasting from 1885 to 1960, with the last 52 years as part of “Belgian Congo” (1908-1960).

Questions remain, as my cousin Peder pointed out in an academic paper, as to how this specific sword, re-cataloged in a manner devoid of its historical context in 1995, was used against Congolese people, along with many other questions of inquiry about the object’s production, use (by Belgians and Congolese people), users, European colonialism, collective memory, and other related categories (Schaefer 2025).

All in all, this trip was illuminating in showing libraries outside of the U.S., and making clear their national or regional importance, each with their own objectives, patronage, and structure. I’m excited to see what’s next and what libraries I come across in the days, weeks, and months to come, as I continue to go to my local library branch as a patron and as a member of the friends of the library group, assisting the library in its programming.

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Sources used

• “About KBR,” Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), 2025.
• Hoschild, Adam. “The Fight to Decolonize the Museum,” The Atlantic, January/February 2020.
• “History and tourist information,” KU Leuven Libraries, 2025.
• “Mahieu, Adolphe” (in French), Africa Archives Museum, 2025.
• “Overview KU Leuven Libraries,” KU Leuven, 2025.
• Schaefer, Peder. “A Machete in the Archive: A Microhistorical Solution to the Problem of Agency in Global History,” 13 Jun. 2025, unpublished, pp. 3-4, 6-8, 10-13, 16-17.
• Schaefer, Peder. “About,” 2025.
• “University Library & Tower,” Visit Leuven, 2025.
• “Visit the University Library,” Leuven Leisure, 2025.

#Belgium #bookBurning #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #collectiveMemory #colonialism #destruction #Germany #globalHistory #HerbertHoover #KBR #KULeuven #Leuven #libraryTourism #microhistory #PederSchaefer #RoyalLibraryOfBelgium #shortBlogs #swords #WorldWars

Pop Culture Library Review

2026-01-12 15:01:27

Attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England

Beyond the NLS, Scotland has various libraries within the country. There’s over twenty public libraries in Edinburgh alone. The day after I visited the NLS, I traveled to Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RGBE) by bus. This garden is akin to Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. It has a beautiful plant collection, and a special library. However, the library isn’t accessible from the garden, a clear barrier to entry. Furthermore, the science, learning and archives section is only accessible by appointment. That is too bad. If it had been accessible from the garden I may have visited it. There are museums and various collections within the garden as well. Every plant has a specific identifying number associated with it.

Note: This serves as the beginning of my series, which begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be two more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in London and Belgium coming later this year. Links to those will be added to this post later.

The RGBE website describes the library as providing the “basic tools” to support research and organization of biodiversity into a “manageable framework to underpin ecological and biological research.” This makes it even more unfortunate that the “extensive” library, said to be the Scottish national reference collection for “specialist botanical and horticultural resources” with over one million items, cannot be accessed from the garden itself. A pamphlet purchased for two pounds says directly: “no access from Garden,” putting this barrier into writing.
Photograph of part of a pamphlet noting that the RGBE library cannot be accessed from the garden (My photograph)
The second part of my vacation involved staying one week at HF Holidays’ Derwent Bank house, which sits on Derwent Water lake, to hike throughout the acclaimed and well-known Lake District, in Cumbria. Some of the hikes were arduous, although that might not be the case if you were physically fit, unlike myself, who wasn’t as fit as other hikers. I wanted to hike there as it was blazing hot in Baltimore, where I live. Other hikers were primarily from England and the Netherlands. The hikes often involved going through sheep grazing areas, avoiding sheep poop in the process, with beautiful views, and a visit to the Castlerigg Stone Circle.

On the fifth day of hiking, on July 31st, the coach bus I was riding in, with fellow hikers passed by the Keswick library. It looked to be one big room filled with desktop computers. Further research indicated that this library offers printing, loanable dementia bags and storysacks, hearing aid batteries, and more. It’s located off the town’s main street, with some nearby parking lots (they call them “car parks” in England), plus a bus station 200 yards from the library. It also hosts board games, a Lego club, jigsaw puzzle building, mindful coloring, books to help with well-being and health, and more.

Lastly was a bookshelf almost akin to the Little Free “Library” collections in the U.S. (but without serving a physical manifestation of a “desire to privatize the world”), at the Penrith train station. See you at the next post, where my journey continues, in London!

© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

---

Sources used

• “Derwent Bank Lake District,” HF Holidays, 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Blogposts, fictional archives, Ancestry’s monopoly on federal records, the Little Free “Library” deception, powerful ICJ decisions, and the DNC’s sidelining of pro-Palestinian voices,” History Hermann, 3 Sept. 2024.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Here’s four photos I took from my third-floor room at the Derwent Bank house of @hfholidays.co.uk on August 1st, the last day I was there, looking down at the beautiful garden, and down across the Derwent Water lake to the beautiful landscape across the lake. I revised the image slightly from the original using an Instagram filter on here. I only stayed for a week, and this was only the second part of my trip (the first part was going to #edinburgh) but I throughly [sic] enjoyed my time there, even if the hikes could be rigorous at times,” Instagram, 9. Aug. 2025.
• Hermann, Burkely. “Photos of the Castlerigg Stone Circle which I took on July 28th, a place also known as the Druids Circle. I used some photo tools on here to make these images even better and pop out more, as the originals were rather dark. #castleriggstonecircle,” Instagram, 9. Aug. 2025.
• “Keswick Library,” Cumberland Council, 2025.
• “Libraries,” City of Edinburgh, 2025.
• “Library & Archives,” Longwood Gardens, 2025.
• Miline, Simon. “Why our work matters,” Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 2025.
• “Our History,” Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 2025.
• “Penrith (North Lakes) (PNR),” National Rail, 2025.
• “What We Do,” Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 2025.

#CastleriggStoneCircle #castleriggstonecircle #Cumbria #DerwentBank #Edinburgh #England #gardens #HFHolidays #Keswick #LakeDistrict #lakes #libraryTourism #LongwoodGardens #maps #memory #museums #NationalLibraryOfScotland #Penrith #publicTransit #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #Scotland #shortBlogs

Blogposts, fictional archives, Ancestry’s monopoly on federal records, the Little Free “Library” deception, powerful ICJ decisions, and the DNC’s sidelining of pro-Palestinian voices

This newsletter will cover topics related to archives, libraries, genealogy, pop culture, LGBTQ+ people, climate change, Project 2025, The Acolyte cancellation, and new Western and Japanese animati…

^{Burkely Hermann (History Hermann)}