Young reading café with a long history

The reading café in the Christkönig parish center in Penzberg is actually still quite young - the team recently celebrated the fifth anniversary of the café, which is a mixture of library and meeting place.

However, the roots go back over 70 years, to a time when the Christkönig parish center did not yet exist.

Penzberg

- In 2014, lending books in the Christkönig parish center was almost over.

In December six years ago, the parish announced that the library would have to close because the then director Gerlinde Kubbies was leaving and no successor had been found.

And because the number of loans and the number of visitors has decreased.

But then it wasn't actually over.

A team was found to revive the library at the end of June 2015 in a different form and under a new name - as a reading café.

The parish gave its blessing with the stipulation that it would not be a pure library, but an open meeting place.

"I'm really happy that we punched it through back then," says Karin Mooshammer.

She and Margarete Drexel had insisted on a new start in the parish council.

Today the volunteer-run reading café has around 4,400 items to borrow - books, CDs, DVDs, games and audio books for children, young people and adults.

In 2019 Karin Mooshammer counted 2,963 visitors who came to borrow or have a coffee on the two opening days per week.

There is, or better still, tea, coffee and homemade cake, game afternoons, book rallies and more - until the corona pandemic thwarted the bill.

“People are missing that right now,” says Karin Mooshammer.

This continues a parish library tradition that began in Penzberg over 70 years ago.

Anette Völker-Rasor went into this in a contribution to the opening of the parish center in 1995.

According to this, a parish library was founded as early as 1948, which was comprehensively renovated and reopened in 1978.

According to Karin Mooshammer, she was first in the old rectory on Sigmundstrasse, and then from 1978 in the former children's home on Bahnhofstrasse.

When the library opened 25 years ago in the newly built parish center, it was called the “library in the parish center” - an indication that it was supposed to be a meeting place even then.

“We are now increasingly pursuing this with the reading café,” says Karin Mooshammer.

It should be a place where people meet and talk, "not just about books, but about God and the world".

The reading café, she says, has focused more on the parish groups again and, for example, has made reading material available on their topics for women's association meetings and afternoons for the elderly.

Many churchgoers also come before or after the services.

“But that doesn't mean that we're not open to the outside world.” Sometimes people who have looked at the Campendonk window in Christ the King's Church would also drop in to get information.

Anyone could come, says Mooshammer.

For example, there is Elfriede Geiselbrecht.

She was honored at the five-year celebration as one of those visitors who borrowed the most last year.

“I appreciate the personal contact,” she says of the reading café.

You borrow a lot of adult and children's books and have now discovered the Brittany crime novels by Jean-Luc Bannalec.

And the selection of games is great too, she adds.

Almost a dozen volunteers take turns in the reading café.

For example Monika Schuldlos, who has been with us almost from the start.

“I think the overall concept is nice, with reading, meeting, coffee and cake,” she says.

Karin Mooshammer and Monika Schuldlos see the reading café as “definitely not” as competition for the much larger city library.

More like a supplement.

They are not afraid of contact.

Many visitors would go to both libraries.

She herself, says blameless, does that too.

Open

is the reading café in the Christkönig parish center on Bahnhofstrasse on Thursdays, 3.30 p.m. to 6 p.m., and Sundays, 9.45 a.m. to 12 p.m.