Austrian National Library

About

The Austrian National Library (German: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, pronounced [ˌøːstəʁaɪçɪʃə natsi̯oˈnaːlbiblioˌteːk]) is the largest library in Austria, with more than 12 million items in its various collections. The library is located in the Neue Burg Wing of the Hofburg in center of Vienna. Since 2005, some of the collections have been relocated within the Baroque structure of the Palais Mollard-Clary. Founded by the Habsburgs, the library was originally called the Imperial Court Library (German: Kaiserliche Hofbibliothek); the change to the current name occurred in 1920, following the end of the Habsburg Monarchy and the proclamation of the Austrian Republic. The library complex includes four museums, as well as multiple special collections and archives.

The institution has its origin in the imperial library of the Middle Ages. During the Medieval period, the Austrian Duke Albert III (1349–1395) moved the books of the Viennese vaults into a library. Albert also arranged for important works from Latin to be translated into German. In the Hofburg, the treasure of Archduke Albert III had been kept in sacristies inside the south tower of the imperial chapel. The Archduke was a connoisseur of art; he supported the University of Vienna, and he founded a royal workshop for illustrating manuscripts. The oldest book on record at the library, the 1368 golden Holy Gospels, was owned by Albert III; in 1368, Johannes of Troppau, priest at Landskron and canon in Brno, transcribed the four Gospels of the Bible in gold letters with detailed illustrations in the school of Burgundian book art. On scenes depicting the lives of the four Evangelists, four coats of arms show the House of Austria, Tirol, Styria, and Carinthia, the lands which Archduke Albrecht III had ruled at the time.

Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor (1415–1493), had the goal of consolidating the art treasures among the Habsburg possessions. Among other things, he brought some valuable books into the Vienna, among them the Prager Wenzelsbibel and the document of the golden bull.

Through his marriage with Mary of Burgundy, Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1459–1519) came into possession of important books from Burgundy and north France, and brought these to Wiener Neustadt. With a value at that time estimated at 100,000 guldens, these books represented about an eighth of Mary's dowry. Also Maximilian's second wife, Bianca Maria Sforza, brought into the marriage books from Italian workshops as part of her dowry.

At that time the books of the library were kept partially in Wiener Neustadt, partially in Vienna, and partially in Innsbruck. After the death of Maximilian, the books were sent to the palace at Innsbruck. In addition to the valuable books from the public treasury, the Bibliotheca Regia, which collected and categorized scientific works, was developed in Vienna during the 16th century. Besides books, that library also contained globes and atlases. Over time the library expanded thanks to donations from the personal libraries of individual scholars.

The first head librarian, Hugo Blotius, was appointed in 1575 by Emperor Maximilian II. His most important task was drawing up the inventory of the library, which had grown to approximately 9,000 books. As a consequence, new works were added systematically, and other libraries were incorporated.

Caspar von Nydbruck, imperial counsellor who was for a time in charge of the library, was a crypto-Protestant who provided much assistance to the Lutheran polemicist Matthias Flacius, who composed the major anti-Catholic history known as The Magdeburg Centuries. Flacius and his Lutheran associates took care to find and quote original sources to prove what they considered as "the grave corrupting errors" of the Catholic Church. In his position at one of the major libraries of Europe, von Nydbruck was in a position to greatly facilitate their work.

On 26 August 1624, delivery of copies was regulated by order of Ferdinand II. The Imperial Library also increased by purchases. In particular, the library of Philipp Eduard Fugger led to a major expansion. The library currently has about 17,000 sheets of one of the first periodic printing elements, the Fugger newspapers, from the Fugger library.

In 1722, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor authorised the construction of a permanent home for the library in the Hofburg palace, after the plans of Leopold I. The wing was begun by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach and started accommodating the library in the 18th century.

The most valuable addition at that time was the extensive collection of Prince Eugene of Savoy, whose 15,000 volumes included valuable books from France and Italy. The State Hall of the library housed about 200,000 books at this point.

During the reorganization there was for the first time criticism regarding the fact that the library served mainly as representation rather than the search for knowledge. Doctor Gerard van Swieten, physician to Maria Theresia, and his son Gottfried van Swieten supplemented the collection with numerous scientific works. Gottfried van Swieten also successfully introduced the card index. This facilitated the continuous updating of the inventory.

After the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by Napoleon and the Austrian Empire proclaimed in its place, the library was again reorganized. Under custodian Paul Strattmann, the library received a program for the first time which described its order; the library gained a three-way viewpoint:

- it was the library for the formed Classe of the capital who required instruction,

- it was the national library of the Austrian Kaiserthum (empire), where visitors expected to find literary rarities, and,

- it was the library of the Hofburg, from which it takes its name. The collection politics of the Imperial Library separated at the beginning the 19th century appreciably due to the requirements of the representation and its attention to scientific works. The multinational condition of the Austrian Empire brought with itself that, not only German-language books were collected, but also books of the Slavic and Hungarian linguistic area. Substantial parts of the Hungarian collection moved to Budapest, however, after reconciliation with Hungary. During the March revolution of 1848, the Imperial Library was in extreme danger, when after the bombardment of Vienna caused the burning of the Hofburg, in which the Imperial Library was located.

An important addition to the Imperial Library is the papyrus collection, which goes back to the acquisitions of the Viennese of antique dealer Theodor Graf.

After the proclamation of the Republic of Austria, the Imperial Library was renamed in 1920 as the Austrian National Library. The collection politics of intermediate wartime concentrated on "the national literature of those German trunks, which came now under foreign-national rule." The director at that time of the library was Josef Donabaum. Under the line of the general manager, Paul Heigl, during the Nazi period ( NS-zeit ), hundreds of thousands of writings were accommodated here or the library served for majority the worthless, but seized works as transit camps into German libraries.

After the fall of the Nazi regime, the Austrian National Library held on to many of these seized works. In December 2003, in response to the passage of an art restitution law in 1998, the Library submitted a report on such seized works to the Commission for Provenance Research detailing works not yet returned to their rightful owners.

Renamed again into the Austrian National Library after 1945, small parts were returned again, but the majority remained in the collections. The attention of the collection activity was directed again in small steps toward Central and Eastern Europe.

In 1966, large parts of the collections were moved from the building at Josefsplatz to the premises of the Neue Burg wing at Heldenplatz, where new reading halls were set up. Due to the rising space requirement in 1992, the library opened up to approximately 4 million works. Wider ranges for reading halls were furnished at the same time, so that three levels are currently at the disposal of visitors (two floors of the main reading hall and the magazine reading hall).