The history of German Languages and Literatures at Yale is distinguished and long-standing, extending back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the development of research and scholarship, including the establishment of graduate study and the professional schools, proceeded largely on the model of German universities.
The Sterling Memorial Library contains extensive materials for research in all aspects of German studies.
The Yale Collection of German Literature in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library contains the Speck Collection of Goetheana, the largest outside of Germany; the comprehensive Faber du Faur seventeenth-century collection; and papers of Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, Rainer Maria Rilke and the Kurt Wolff publishing firm.