bavarikon4UTreasures in the Staatliche Bibliothek Neuburg an der Donau
Numerous provincial libraries were founded in Bavaria in the course of secularisation, including the Provinzialbibliothek - today's Staatliche Bibliothek Neuburg an der Donau (State Library of Neuburg on the Danube) - founded in April 1803 as the central library for schools and administration. Most of the book holdings come from the secularised monasteries of Kaisheim, Obermedlingen, Maria Mödingen and the Jesuit College of Neuburg. In addition, there are holdings from the Dukes of Palatinate and Neuburg's former Neuburg court library.
The library has a total of 55,300 media, including 35,000 volumes up to the year of publication 1900. The fields of theology, general history, church history, historical auxiliary sciences as well as geography (especially travelogues), jurisprudence, philosophy, philology and natural sciences are particularly well represented. Outstanding collections are the 554 incunabula (prints up to 1500) in 435 volumes and the library of the Augsburg humanist Hieronymus Wolf (1516-1580) with 1,269 prints in 648 volumes.
Highlights from the library's old stock are shown here: It begins with four prints from the library of Count Palatine Ottheinrich (reigned 1505-1559), including the illustrated incunabulum "Der Schatzbehalter" (The Treasure Keeper) from 1491. All four volumes have the typical "Ottheinrich binding". Three volumes, also from the 16th century, come from the library of Hieronymus Wolf, who sold his collection in 1572 to Count Palatine Philipp Ludwig (1569-1614). The work "Respublica venetum. Der grossen Comun der Statt Venedig ursprung" by Donato Giannotti, an influential political thinker who associated with Macchiavelli, was printed in Hans Kilian's workshop in Neuburg in 1557. There is in turn a volume from 1580 taken from Philipp Ludwig's library, which contains among other things a funeral sermon on his father Duke Wolfgang von Pfalz-Zweibrücken und Pfalz-Neuburg (reigned 1532-1569).
The Neuburg Jesuit College's library is represented by the Neo-Latin poems by the court preacher and Jesuit Jakob Balde (1604-1668). The presentation is concluded with three volumes from the 18th century, namely the main work of the Benedictine Ulrich Weiß ("De emendatione intellectus humani", 1747), a volume accompanying a dacdactyliotheca (collection of gems) from 1753, which can now be found in the Studienbibliothek Dillingen, and a geometric plan on the drainage and cultivation of Danube moss at the end of the 18th century.
>> This collection is part of the holdings of the Staatliche Bibliothek Neuburg an der Donau (State Library Neuburg an der Donau).