The Bischöfliche Zentralbibliothek Regensburg

In 1972, the new library building of the Bischöfliche Zentralbibliothek (Episcopal Central Library Regensburg) was opened on the site of the former Regensburg Obermünster convent. According to its founding concept, the diocesan library was designed to centrally house the book, manuscript and music collections of the Diocese of Regensburg’s still existing or already dissolved ecclesiastical institutions, to make them accessible, available for research and to preserve them for the future.

The collection focuses on church history, especially diocesan history, theology, musicology (church music of the 16th and 17th centuries, Cecilianism) and liturgical history. The diocesan library also fulfils the tasks of a service library for the Ordinariate, is at the same time the library of the Verein für Regensburger Bistumsgeschichte (Association for the History of the Diocese of Regensburg) and provides the residents of the diocese with an extensive stock of current theological and humanistic factual and specialist literature. By participating in the Bavarian Library Network, it contributes to the supra-regional supply of literature in the field of its collection focus.

Among the most valuable historical founding holdings were the Baroque library of the former St. Jacob’s Scotch monastery ("Schottenbibliothek") and the Proske music collection. The extensive Scotch monastery library with more than 25,000 volumes is of particular value because it was the only Benedictine monastery library in Bavaria to survive the secularisation of 1803 unscathed. The extraterritorial status of the monastery, occupied only by Scottish monks, had protected the library from access by the Bavarian state.

The completely preserved music library of the physician, theologian and music researcher Carl Proske (1794-1861), whose collection of music and music theory sources from the 15th to the 19th century made him a leading pioneer of the restoration of church music and the Palestrina Renaissance in Germany in the 19th century, is of special significance.

The Institutum Liturgicum Ratisbonense, founded in 1957, with the library of the liturgical scholar Klaus Gamber (1919-1989), is affiliated with the Bischöfliche Zentralbibliothek.

• The objects of the Bischöfliche Zentralbibliothek Regensburg available on baraikon

Collections of the Bischöfliche Zentralbibliothek Regensburg available on bavarikon

• 16th century music manuscripts from the Proske collection