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16th to 20th century historical textbooks from Bavaria from the Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg

The collection of historical textbooks of the Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg (Augsburg University Librarys), comprising some 15,000 volumes, is a group of holdings fed by various sources and is one of the most important special collections of its kind in Germany, providing rich source material for research into the history of education. For the purposes of defining the collection, textbooks are works that were expressly or implicitly intended for learners, including text editions intended for school reading, accompanying text explanations, and learning materials for technical schools, vocational schools, further education schools and teacher training colleges. Textbooks for different types of schools (primary schools, secondary schools etc.) and all school subjects are represented. One focus of the collection is on textbooks from publishing houses in Bavaria (approx. 3,500 titles), a wide selection of which is presented in bavarikon.

The core of the Augsburg textbook collection consists of the relevant titles from the library at the Pädagogische Stiftung Cassianeum, an educational institution founded in Donauwörth in 1875 by the Catholic teacher, educational reformer, publisher and entrepreneur Ludwig Auer (1839-1914). The martyr Cassian, a schoolmaster in Imola in northern Italy in the 3rd century, is considered to be the patron saint of teachers.

Based on Auer's own library, the Cassianeum's extensive specialist library collected works on pedagogy and schools, texts for young people, devotional literature and books on the teacher training subjects, as well as fiction. Donations from clergymen and teachers in particular led to a rich stock of older works. By 1920, the library had grown to 90,000 volumes with a focus on 19th century works.

The library, which had gone into hibernation since the 1920s, came to the Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg on permanent loan in 1981; the Free State of Bavaria provided funds for its purchase in 1989. Larger groups in the collection are the department of pedagogy with 9,000 volumes, children's and adolescent literature with more than 10,000 volumes as well as the textbook collection – one of the largest textbook collections in Germany with approx. 12,000 volumes.

Textbooks are also represented in the Oettingen-Wallerstein Library – part of the university library since 1985 (approx. 1,280 volumes). Most of them come from the Benedictine monasteries of St. Mang in Füssen and Hl. Kreuz in Donauwörth, which had been awarded to the royal house in the course of secularisation at the beginning of the 18th century. The monastery schools there not only served the scholastic education of the mostly still young novices, but were also open to external students.

Another provenance of textbooks are the library collections at the Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Freising (Freising Philosophy and Theology University) and its predecessor institutions, which have existed since 1697. They mainly served the education of the diocesan clergy, but were always open to other pupils as well; at times a grammar school was also attached. After the dissolution of the Freising University (1968), the library holdings were integrated into the Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg in 1971/72.

In the same way, the holdings of the Pädagogische Hochschule Augsburg (Augsburg College of Education), where primary and secondary school teachers were trained from 1958 to 1972, were transferred to the Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg after the institution was dissolved.

Historical textbooks according to the main topics:

>> This collection is part of the holding of the Universitätsbibliothek Augsburg (University Library Augsburg).