Mannheim court library
The Mannheim court library was the Electoral Palatinate Court Library in Mannheim and an important German library of the Age of Enlightenment with extensive holdings. It was also known as the Bibliotheca Palatina Mannheim . Most of the holdings are now in the Bavarian State Library , but also in the University Libraries of Mannheim , Heidelberg and other libraries in Baden-Württemberg .
history
Following the example of the Bibliotheca Palatina of Elector Ottheinrichs (1556–1559), Carl Theodor (Elector from 1742 to 1799) also pursued the goal of building a comprehensive scientific utility library with a collection of antiquarian and museum literature. The basis was the inherited house libraries of the Pfalz-Neuburg and Pfalz-Sulzbach lines with an estimated 15,000 volumes. These were collected by Wolfgang Wilhelm and Philipp Wilhelm von Pfalz-Neuburg , his daughter-in-law Anna Maria Luisa de 'Medici and Christian August von Pfalz-Sulzbach . This included the library of the Zweibrücken Chancellor Ulrich Sitzinger and his descendants.
In 1758 the library building in the east wing of the Mannheim Palace was completed; it was built as a counterpart to the palace church . The ceiling painting of the artistically richly furnished book room showed The Unveiling of Truth through the Time of Lambert Krahe . The gable relief made reference to science and the arts.
The library has been consistently expanded since 1756 by the court librarian Nicolas Maillot de la Treille , who was hired on Voltaire's recommendation , and this was also done by purchasing entire libraries. This included the private library of the Catholic controversial theologian Johann Nikolaus Weislinger with more than 5000 prints. After the Jesuit colleges in France were dissolved, works came from their libraries from 1765, for example from the Molsheim college in Mannheim. Nine years later, books from the dissolved German colleges of the order followed, and later also the important library of the Mannheim Barefoot Monastery . Since 1763 the library has also been open to scholars from the Electoral Palatinate and foreign scholars on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Around 600 duplicates from the Mannheim library went to the Heidelberg University library around 1760. The Electoral Public Library, founded by Carl Theodor in 1770 in the residential city of Düsseldorf , also received duplicates from Mannheim in the early years.
By 1776 the library had grown to 36,000 works. Even after Carl Theodor left for Munich as Elector Palatinate-Baiern , the stock of books was further expanded, but the cover and book decorations were saved. The pirated prints by the Electoral Palatinate book printers in Frankenthal and Mannheim, as well as the modern editions of Latin classics from the Societas Litterata by Anton Klein in Mannheim, which competed with those of the "Editiones Bipontinae" from Zweibrücken , also increased.
In 1785 Andreas Lamey became court librarian. By 1799 the court library should have grown to around 85,000 volumes. In 1791 the castle was dissolved as a residence. Because of the Revolutionary Wars, the library was stored in the basement and transferred to Munich in the summer of 1803. There the holdings came to the Royal Court and Central Library in Munich (today: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek). A remainder of almost 3,000 volumes remained in Mannheim, which is now in the university library in Mannheim Castle.
The library in contemporary judgment
For the Bavarian court librarian Andreas Felix von Oefele , the Mannheim book collection was already considered to be the successor to the Heidelberg Bibliotheca Palatina, which came to Rome in 1623. Philipp Wilhelm Gercken , Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart and Sophie von La Roche were positive and impressed , but the losses caused by the Thirty Years' War were repeatedly regretted. Schubart wrote: The library has a very nice outward appearance. Immediately upon entering the marble bust of Voltaer figures as if he were the god who deserved to preside over all wisdom. The book collection consists mostly of printed, mostly new fonts, few rarities, even fewer manuscripts. In the historical field, as I saw from the written lists, it is fairly complete.
Book design
The works of the court library were mostly newly bound and furnished with marble paper, gold-embossed leather backs or full leather covers. These received supralibros with the coat of arms of Carl Theodor, which was stamped on the volumes in gold. After 1778 it is the coat of arms of the Palatinate-Bavarian region. The inscription on the spine with the monogram BP for Bibliotheca Palatina is rarer . Instead of marble paper, there is also paper with colorful prints with bird motifs in the endpaper.
After 1779 the end papers became more sober and by the time of the revolution in 1789 the book decorations were “even more subdued”.
Rara Mannheim origin
A fragment of a 42-line Gutenberg Bible from the Mannheim court library is now in the German Museum of Books and Writing in Leipzig .
The Heidelberg University Library has parts of two copies of the Missal Augustanum from 1489 from the same provenance , as well as a fragment of the Missal Ratisbonense from 1485, printed by Johann Sensenschmidt and Johannes Beckenhaub .
literature
- Max Oeser : Städtische Schloßbücherei Mannheim - Short guide through their collections . Mannheim 1926, urn : nbn: de: bsz: 180-digad-29470 .
- Diana Rahm: From residence to romantic province. In: Armin Schlechter (ed.): Precious items of collected history. Heidelberg and the Palatinate in certificates from the university library. Winter, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0862-6 (= publications of the Heidelberg University Library , Volume 1). P. 83ff.
- Kathrin Ellwardt: The collections at the electoral court. In: State Palaces and Gardens of Baden-Württemberg (Ed.): Mannheim Baroque Palace : Crown of the Electoral Palatinate; History and equipment. Petersberg 2007. pp. 71-74.
- Ferdinand Werner: The electoral residence in Mannheim. Worms 2006. pp. 281-311.
- Elisabeth Remak-Honnef, Hermann Hauke: The manuscripts of the former Mannheim court library Clm 10001-10930, with the exception of the Codices Lullani (CLm 10493-10658) and the Camerarius Collection (Clm 10351-10431). In: 4. Series nova: Catalog of the Latin manuscripts of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz 1991. ISBN 978-3-447-03167-7 .
Web links
- Wolfgang Schibel: The Mannheim court library, Carl Theodor and his predecessors as book collectors. Mannheim University Library 2000 (PDF, 328 KB).
Individual evidence
- ↑ DNB: Biblia, 42 lines
- ↑ Incunable catalog INKA: Biblia <lat.>. 42 lines