The Private Library of emperor Franz I of Austria

The Private Library of Emperor Franz I (1768 - 1835), later known as the Fideikommissbibliothek, is considered a prime example of an imperial book and graphics collection and has been largely preserved in its original form to this day as a special collection of the Austrian National Library. At the same time the rich collections and the fate of the library have remained widely unknown to the scientific community, since large parts of its collections remained inaccessible until now and the history of the library has as yet not been duly reviewed. The proposed project defines itself as part of contemporary library and book historiography and places the institutional history of the Private Library of Franz I within the context of cultural history. Therefore the project aims at reconstructing the history of the library under an interdisciplinary perspective in a threefold manner: 1) Reconstruction of the Private Library of Franz I. based on archival and library sources 2) Description and analysis of the library as a private collection as well as a knowledge and memory institution for the emperor and his imperial status; 3) Embedding the history of the library in the political, social, intellectual and cultural contexts and discourses at the end of the 18th century until 1835. In the first part of the project the origins and the development of the collection from 1784 until 1835 will be examined, as well as the involvement of the emperor in building up the library. The reconstruction of the library and the collection development is based on the extensive archives of the Fideikommissbibliothek and on the "Handarchiv" of the emperor. In a second step the size and the richness of the collections of the Private Library of Franz I. in comparison to the "official" Court Library and other European royal and princely libraries will be analysed, thus embedding the history of the library of Franz I. in a general history of knowledge and thought. In a third part dedicated to the history of books in relation to political history milestones of Austrian and European history between 1784 and 1835 (the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the foundation of the Austrian Empire, the end of the Holy Roman Empire, the Congress of Vienna and the establishment of an new European system of power) the sources will be reviewed with a strong focus on political iconography and visual culture. The project aims at creating knowledge on and making available a widely unknown library to the international research community. Therefore two international conferences in the historical rooms of the library, an exhibition and the online presentation of the holdings on the web are integral parts of the project.

The former private library of Emperor Franz II/I (known today as Habsburg-L othringische Fideikommissbibliothek) is an outstanding book and graphic collection due to both the considerable extent and the exquisiteness of its holdings. It is nearly completely preserved as a part of the Austrian National Library. The present project was dedicated to the 50 years of development which the library underwent during the life of its founder (17841835). In short the results are: a comprehensive overview of the making of the collection including all important aspects of library history, a contribution to the understanding of the personality of Emperor Franz II/I, and an analysis of the social, economic, historical and cultural network to which the librarys history was connected to.In a first step it was necessary to shed some light on the education of Archduke Franz at the Florentine Court and to examine the private library of his father (Grand duke Pietro Leopoldo, afterwards Emperor Leopold II) which was probably a model for his own book collection. As a fundamental result for this early period it must be emphasized that the Archduke was confronted with the literature of Enlightenment in a comprehensive way. As the development in the years between the date when the library was first mentioned (1785) and its step-by-step institutionalization in the second decade of the 19th century (appointment of a librarian in 1806, beginning of cataloguing in 1807, installation of library archives in 1809 and a fixed donation in 1812) has so far been completely unknown, external sources allowed to reconstruct the growth of the holdings in this period with satisfying accuracy. Furthermore the biographical background of the library staff was examined as well as the interaction between the Emperor, his librarian and the court staff on the one hand and the book market on the other. A major topic of the project was to analyse the growth of the holdings with respect to the contents, the languages, the ways of acquisition and so on. Special cases which were of great importance in this context and have therefore been investigated thoroughly are the purchase of complete collections and acquisitions made in the course of auctions. Other studies were dedicated to the financing of the collection by means of the Emperors Privy Purse, to the locations of the library within the imperial Hofburg and to the cataloguing of the books. The last point meant for the librarian amongst other things to cope with the task of classifying contemporary knowledge.For our work on these topics various sources have been explored: files from the internal and other Austrian or foreign archives, contemporary handwritten catalogues, historical bills, auction catalogues and selected holdings from the library itself which have been analysed with respect to their relation to the before mentioned sources. In addition to the narrative account of the librarys history the holdings have been analysed statistically on this basis which was also a method to support some of our main arguments. Due to historical comparisons it was finally possible to point out influences as well as the very particular character of the library.