kuk naval library

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The kuk naval library ( Croatian Mornarička knjižnica ) was a specialist library founded in 1802 , which was built up by the Austrian navy . In the course of time it had its seat in the war ports of Venice , Trieste and Pola . The remainder of the naval library's holdings, including stops in Italy and the occupied Czech Republic, were collected in the Vienna War Archives from the 1950s onwards . Returned to Yugoslavia in the 1970s , it has been operating as a special collection at the university library in Pula / Pola, Croatia, since 1996 . The old inventory of the reference library comprises 6,757 titles in 20,371 volumes.

history

The basis of the naval library goes back to a multi-volume book donation from the War and Navy Minister Archduke Karl von Österreich-Teschen to the naval command in Venice , which was annexed from 1798 to 1805 . The marine officer corps advocated and supported the establishment of a corresponding library. Naval commander Joseph Graf von L'Espine suggested in 1802 - which is considered to be the founding year - an enlargement of the library, which was already under construction, which was taken into account, and tried several times rather unsuccessfully to obtain naval literature from the famous library of San Marco, also located in Venice . With the Peace of Pressburg in 1805 - Austria had to cede Venice to the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy - this first Biblioteca della Marina was initially lost to the Habsburg monarchy.

In 1814, however, the Austrian Navy returned to Venice, capital of the Kingdom of Lombardo-Venetia , which belonged to Austria after the Congress of Vienna , and confiscated the most likely former library in the arsenal there , which with 474 volumes made up about three quarters of the old stock. It became part of the Collegio di Marina , later the Naval Cadet College , and existed there alongside a study library. The library was subsequently able to expand its holdings through bequests, donations or acquisitions from the military and scholars such as Marchese Chasteller and Brera Conte Stratico .

During the First Italian War of Independence (1848/49) the naval library initially remained in Venice, but was then moved to Trieste in the early 1850s - like the naval academy - where it became the central library of the Austrian navy with a focus on marine and applied auxiliary sciences. An inventory from that time already listed over 2,000 volumes. The library was initially in the premises of the Naval Observatory of Franz Schaub housed. Later it became a department of the Hydrographic Institute in Trieste.

When in the 1860s under Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria Pola became the central war port, a branch depot was set up there and the majority of the naval library was moved in 1865/66 to Istria on the Adriatic Sea , where it was renamed the Austro-Hungarian Navy Library . The documents that were left behind were then distributed to institutions in Venice, Pola and Trieste. In 1869 it was affiliated as an independent department to the newly founded Hydrographic Institute in Pola. In 1874 the trade library of the marine section was taken over. The holdings also grew due to a donation from the Military Geography Institute and the acquisition by ship libraries (from 1880). In 1892 the library moved into the property of the Marine Technical Committee, whose department it became at the turn of the century. In 1904 the inventory amounted to 14,944 titles (= 43,574 volumes), last in 1918 to 18,472 titles. After the end of the First World War and the accompanying collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, parts of the library were moved to the Kingdom of Italy , which belonged to the Triple Entente from 1915 , or assigned to the library of the Naval Military Command (Biblioteca del Comando Militare Marittimo).

In the course of the German occupation of Italy in 1943, the library was moved to Lednice Castle (Eisgrub) and Valtice Castle (Feldsberg) in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1944 . In 1949/50 the holdings were transferred to the Vienna War Archives . In 1975, the Republic of Austria (as a "sign of good will") and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia agreed on the extensive return to Pula to the scientific library there, with around 12,000 volumes remaining in the Austrian State Archives . In 1991 it was registered as a cultural monument in the now independent Republic of Croatia . In 1996 the move as a special collection of the University Library in Pula (since 1979 location of the University of Rijeka ) to the former Marine Casino, the House of the Croatian Homeland Security, was approved and opened to the public a year later.

Duration

The main focus of the predominantly German-language holdings are nautical studies (including navigation ) as well as the adjacent areas of natural sciences and mathematics, military science - the largest single stock with 798 titles -, geography and individual humanities. Numerous magazines, especially from the marine sector, are also represented in the collection.

literature

  • Walter Wagner : On the history of the k. and k. Naval library . In: Mitteilungen des Österreichisches Staatsarchivs 15 (1962), pp. 336–389.
  • Walter Wagner, Bruno Dobrić: Mornarička knjižnica: knjižnica austrougarske Mornarice = Kuk Marine Library . Sveučilišna knjižnica, Pula 1997. [Texts in German and Croatian]

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