Prince of Stolberg-Wernigerodesche Library

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Former library building in the pleasure garden of Wernigerode
Bookplate of Count Christian Ernst, 1721
Luther Bible from the Stolberg library

The Fürst zu Stolberg-Wernigerodesche Bibliothek is an important aristocratic library that has been open to the public again since July 2019, 80 years after its war-related closure, at its new location in Hirzenhain in Hesse .

history

The library goes back to Count Wolf Ernst zu Stolberg (1546–1606) who, with an estimated 4,000 volumes, owned one of the largest private libraries of the 16th century.

18th and 19th centuries

After the following generations had not paid special attention to the library, a new period of prosperity began in 1712 with the accession of Count Christian Ernst zu Stolberg-Wernigerode (1691–1771). In January 1746, he declared the library, which then comprised around 10,000 volumes, to be a "public library", which was to be open to scholars interested in scholarship twice a week. In 1615 Count Heinrich had already determined in his will that the count's book collection should be open to the public. When Christian Ernst died, the library already contained over 30,000 volumes. In his will he had designated it as an inalienable Fideikommissgut. This protection of cultural property continued to exist after the Fideikommisse was repealed as a result of the Weimar Constitution of 1919.

In 1826/27 the collection was moved from Wernigerode Castle to the former orangery in the Lustgarten after the latter building had been redesigned as a library.

In 1841 the library of the count archivist Christian Heinrich Delius , which contained around 13,000 volumes and 10,000 maps, was purchased in 1857, the library of the bibliophile count librarian Carl Zeisberg with around 16,000 volumes. The classification system, which is still valid today, was worked out by Ernst Förstemann , the librarian responsible since 1851, and published in 1866 together with a manuscript catalog .

From 1866 Eduard Jacobs was in charge of the library and archive of the Count House, which was elevated to the rank of prince in 1890. In 1897 there were around 107,700 volumes, including 600 incunabula and 1095 manuscripts.

Weimar Republic

During the time of the Weimar Republic , 444 valuable manuscripts and books were sold to the antiquarians Rosenthal (Munich) and Hiersemann (Leipzig) in 1926 under the direction of Wilhelm Herse and then Günther Deneke because of serious economic difficulties due to the global economic crisis . The library was officially closed in 1929.

Because of the temporary compulsory administration of the princely property by the Dresdner Bank , the "Association of Civil Servants Entitled to Pension" took over the administration of the library and had 31,286 volumes sold by the antiquarian Martin Breslauer from 1930 to 1933 . Sales were made mainly to the Prussian State Library in Berlin , Harvard University , the Senckenberg Natural Research Society in Frankfurt and the Halle company in Munich .

time of the nationalsocialism

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, the club ended the cooperation with the merchant of Jewish origin. In 1934 the princely family took over the management of the library again, which at that time had 89,628 volumes, and made it accessible again to science in 1935 and to the public in 1937. When the Second World War broke out , the library was closed by the authorities.

Soviet occupation and the GDR era

After the end of the war, Wernigerode and all the Stolberg possessions in the Harz became a Soviet zone of occupation. The princely family fled to Luisenlust near Hirzenhain in Hesse. The family's assets within the province of Saxony were expropriated in the course of the ordinance on land reform in the province of Saxony, and with it the library.

In April 1946 the Trophy Commission of the Red Army transported around 50,000 volumes from the library, initially to the SVA camp in Rummelsberg near Berlin and a little later to Moscow . The remaining approx. 40,000 volumes remained in the library, the premises of which subsequently fell into poor condition and in some cases began to deteriorate at the end of the 1940s.

After a decision by the state government in 1946, according to which libraries and books were to be given to the state library in order to be later distributed to other public libraries and institutes, almost the entire rest of the Wernigeroder holdings were transferred to the state library in 1948/49 (formerly the university library ) in Halle . A large part of the holdings was not redistributed, but integrated into the state library, whereby Ernst Förstemann's system of listing was almost completely lost.

Since the loading capacity was insufficient for transports, works of legal content such as B. Prussian law collections, ministerial gazettes and official gazettes in the orangery. The whereabouts of these works is unknown. In 1949 the entire Stolberg archive from Wernigerode was moved to the Historical State Archive in Oranienbaum. The long-time library and archive manager Karl Reulecke hanged himself in the orangery in 1950.

Library today

Since the turning point and reunification of Germany , Philipp Fürst zu Stolberg-Wernigerode has been campaigning for the rebuilding of the library. In the course of the Compensation and Compensation Act (EALG), which came into force in 1994, large parts of the holdings remaining in the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt in Halle and other institutions of the former GDR were restituted to the prince (as of July 2019, around 20,000 volumes). These were supplemented by volumes accumulated during the division of Germany as well as donations and returns from private individuals, second-hand bookshops, auction houses and states that previously belonged to the Soviet Union.

The holdings were initially stored centrally in Luisenlust in Hesse, then brought to the German National Library in Frankfurt in 2015 and cataloged there. The indexing followed the historical, Förstemannian classification system. The books were then returned to Luisenlust, where they were placed in a wing that had been converted into a library using the restored historical system. They have been publicly accessible again in Hirzenhain since 2019.

Stocks

Today the library focuses on theology and church history and has a comprehensive inventory of regional and family history. The library also contains holdings from ancient , German and French literature as well as legal , historical and geographical works.

In addition to printed works from the 15th century - including approx. 100 incunabula - the library contains around 1,200 manuscripts, more than 4,000 graphics, maps and plans, a number of historical photos that have not yet been recorded and a catalog display machine from the 18th century . Today the library is set up together with the “Wunderkammer” (with a focus on natural history cabinet) and the archaeological collection (formerly the Augustin collection ).

With around 50,000 volumes, the greater part of the historical Stolberg library is still located in the libraries of Russia and the successor states of the CIS as a cultural asset brought during the war . In addition, volumes expropriated during the land reform are still offered on the market for antiquarian books. These library losses are listed on the website of the German Center for Cultural Property Losses .

literature

in order of appearance

  • Ernst Förstemann: The Count's Stolberg Library in Wernigerode . Nordhausen 1866.
  • Wilhelm Herse: The princely library in Wernigerode. Lecture given at the meeting of the Association of German Librarians on May 18, 1921 . In: Zeitschrift für Bücherfreunde , vol. 45/46 (1922), p. 7.
  • Hildegard Herricht: The former Stolberg-Wernigerödische manuscript department. The story of a small feudal private collection , Halle 1970 (= writings on libraries in Saxony-Anhalt, 31).
  • Ulrich-Dieter Oppitz: The "German Manuscripts of the Middle Ages" (Zb signature) of the former Stolberg-Wernigerodische manuscript collection . In: Geographia Spiritualis. Festschrift for Hanno Beck. Edited by Detlef Haberland, Frankfurt a. M. u. a. 1993, pp. 187-205.
  • Jörg Brückner : Bible collection was world-class. 46 incunabula belonged to the holdings of the Princely Library. In: Neue Wernigeröder Zeitung , 1995, No. 23, p. 20.
  • Klaus-Dieter Lehmann , Ingo Kolasa: The Trophy Commissions of the Red Army: A collection of documents for the kidnapping of books from German libraries . Frankfurt 1996 (= magazine for librarianship and bibliography, special issue vol. 64).
  • Konrad Breitenborn : The fate of the princely library 50 years ago, in April 1948 and after. In: Neue Wernigeröder Zeitung , 1996
    • Part 1: "... transported away by the Soviets with an unknown destination" . In: No. 9, May 2, 1996, p. 22
    • Part 2: Reulecke couldn't cope with Exodus . In: No. 10, May 15, 1996, p. 24
    • Part 3: "Goods" from Georgia for the German "gray market" . In: No. 11, May 29, 1996, p. 22
  • Renate Schipke, Kurt Heydeck: Manuscript census of the smaller collections in the eastern federal states of Germany: inventory of the former central inventory of medieval manuscripts up to 1500 in the collections of the GDR (ZIH) (Berlin State Library - Prussian cultural property. Catalogs of the manuscript department, special volume). Wiesbaden 2000.
  • Brigitte Pfeil: Catalog of the German and Dutch manuscripts of the Middle Ages in the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt in Halle (Saale) (= writings on the library system in Saxony-Anhalt, 89 / 1–2). 2 volumes. Halle (Saale) 2007, especially vol. 1, pp. XVII – XXX ( online ).
  • Hans Meier zu Eissen: The book theft in the GDR. The East German aristocratic and grammar school libraries 1945–1989, the post robbery of the Stasi general "M". Documentation of a state criminal robbery . Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3-9800885-4-1 , pp. 98-115.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Förstemann: The Countess Stolberg Library in Wernigerode. In: MDZ - Munich Digitization Center. 1866, Retrieved July 19, 2019 (d).
  2. ↑ Klaus Graf: “On the basis of the Compensation Act of December 1, 1994, 1584 manuscript volumes and 50 incunabula, approx. 18,500 old prints and 444 cards were restituted to the Prince Stolberg-Wernigerode”. Retrieved on July 28, 2019 (German).