Dillingen University Library

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University library door

The university library in Dillingen an der Donau , a town in the Bavarian administrative district of Swabia , was the library of the Jesuit College , founded in 1549 as Collegium St. Hieronymi , which was promoted to university in 1551 and existed until 1803. It is located on Kardinal-von-Waldburg-Straße and is now integrated into the building of the Academy for Teacher Training and Personnel Management . In addition to the study church and the golden hall , the library hall , created in the transition from baroque to rococo , is one of the jewels of the former educational institution. It is used today by the Dillingen Study Library .

history

It is assumed that the Dillingen University was equipped with a library when it was founded by the Augsburg prince-bishop Otto Truchsess von Waldburg . In 1567 the Bibliotheca in novum Collegium , the Konviktbau built in 1565/68 by the professors of the Collegium Soc. Jesu Dilingae BVM (Dillinger College of the Society of Jesus of the Blessed Virgin Mary) and relocated to a room on its west side in 1577 that was difficult to use as living space. When this building was replaced by a spacious four-winged building in between 1713 and 1738, you taught there in the north wing, in its projecting to the garden means risalit , one extending over the second and third floor library, the roof of a today ridge turret crowned . The refectory and a recreation room were located on the two lower floors . The library's book inventory had grown rapidly over time and had to meet the requirements of a university with four faculties , including a humanistic grammar school .

After the repeal of the Jesuit order by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, the university came to the Augsburg monastery and, as a result of the secularization in Bavaria in 1802, to the electorate and later Kingdom of Bavaria . On November 3, 1803, the new sovereign Maximilian closed the university. The grammar school and the seminary remained in Dillingen. The university was converted into a lyceum and the former university library was renamed the district and study library, with the addition Royal from 1806 to 1918 .

At the beginning of the 19th century, the library was significantly enriched by the holdings of the secularized monasteries Wettenhausen , Elchingen and Fultenbach . According to Friedrich Zoepfl , over 5000 volumes came from the Elchingen monastery. Of the 4,000 books from the Fultenbach monastery, more than 1,100 volumes remained after being sorted out in Dillingen. The study library took over 2500 volumes from the Wettenhausen Monastery.

In 1965 the library, which had meanwhile expanded far beyond the original library hall, was relocated and moved to its current location, the building of the old grammar school. At this point was the food house, the so-called Domus S. Hieronymi , which was built in 1579/80 as accommodation for poor students and renovated in 1697. The current building was erected there in 1724/25 and housed the old grammar school until the Johann Michael Sailer grammar school was built in the 1960s. In order to be able to accommodate the stock of 140,000 volumes, the former high school was rebuilt and gutted inside. In addition, an exhibition room and a reading room with 3500 volumes were set up. Particularly valuable works such as an incunable or bookplate from the 15th century, which are considered to be the oldest in the German-speaking area, are still kept in the historical library hall .

Sculpture of Mercury on the door of the university library

Library room

The two-story room extends over a rectangle and is divided into seven axes .

Wood carvings

Inlaid doors form the entrance to the library, framed on the outside by life-size carved figures of Minerva and Mercury . Like the rich wood carvings in the library furnishings, which were never completed, they were created by Johann Georg Bschorer . The gallery running around three sides is supported by partly sinuous, partly smooth columns, which are adorned with imaginatively carved capitals with small angel figures. On the shelves between the windows are the figures of the evangelists , the apostles Peter and Paul , who are laterally surrounded by floating angels. The putti on the upper shelves bear the attributes of science, two seated putti hold relief cartouches in their hands.

Ceiling fresco

The entire ceiling surface is filled with a fresco by the Munich court theater painter Joseph Ignaz Schilling . The center of the depiction is the Holy Spirit , who, as the source of all science and wisdom, hovers in the shape of a dove above a trompe l'œil dome supported by seven pillars. Wisdom is enthroned at the bottom of the dome . It is surrounded by the allegories of arithmetic (with book and staff of Aesculapius ), geometry (with angle), astronomy (with globe) and natural science (with herbs and ointment box), in the middle of which Justitia is blindfolded, in her right hand a sword and a scale in the left, seated on a cloud. The left female figure below is symbolic of spiritual power with a book and two keys in her hands and leads to the group of figures around the Pope on the outer edge of the fresco. The right female figure above the depiction of the emperor is equipped with a bundle of lictors and a laurel-wrapped sword, the insignia of secular power.

On the eastern part of the fresco an eagle, symbol of the Evangelist John , leads over to the disciplines of theology , at the top of which a female figure with a blue beret , the personification of theology, hovers. The other female figures represent: dogmatics (with open book and torch), moral theology (with closed book and heart), exegesis (with lock and key). On the right, the Archangel Michael plunges a heretic into the abyss.

The lower left of the picture are populated by the Doctors of the Church Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure , the Apostles John and Paul, in the middle of whom Moses is depicted with the tablets of the Law. On the right side are St. Augustine and St. Jerome represented, who are among the Great Western Fathers of the Church .

The two Jesuit saints Ignatius von Loyola and Franz Xaver are remembered on the eastern edge of the picture and the patron saints of the medical faculty Cosmas and Damian on the western edge .

literature

Web links

Commons : Dillingen University Library  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrich Zoepfl : The study library in Dillingen - your history from 1549 to 1945. II. The Bavarian district and study library 1803 to 1945 . In: Yearbook of the Historical Association Dillingen an der Donau Vol. 70, Dillingen an der Donau 1968

Coordinates: 48 ° 34 ′ 36.6 "  N , 10 ° 29 ′ 28.5"  E