The Paderborn University Library acquired the library of the writer and publicist Dr. Franz Schonauer in 1989 with the financial support of the Ministry for Innovation, Science, Research and Technology of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Stadtwerke Paderborn.

Dr. Franz Schonauer (19.02.1920-14.06.1989) worked as a freelance writer and journalist after holding leading positions in several literary publishing houses. He was close to the 'Gruppe 47' and accompanied the literary life of the Federal Republic of Germany critically and essayistically for forty years. Important works were devoted to 'Literature in the Third Reich', the work of Ernst Jünger, Max von der Grün and other authors of the post-war period.

The library's holdings of around 9.500 volumes include numerous first editions and works by German-language authors such as Alfed Andersch, Johannes Bobrowski, Günter Eich, Erich Fried and Arno Schmidt and many other lesser-known authors, as well as translations of 20th century European and American literature, special collections on Gottfried Benn and Ernst Jünger, and works on the sociology of literature from the circle of Georg Lukacs.

The works were integrated into the systematic open access collection of the UB.