Sammlung Alff

The "Alff Collection" of the UCL Cologne is a collection of pamphlets, brochures and some newspaper editions on the history of the Brabant and Liège revolutions. It refers to the revolutionary events in the Austrian Netherlands and the Principality of Liège at the end of the 18th century.

The prints were mainly published between 1781 and 1825; the focus lies on the years 1790 and especially 1791, to which more than two thirds of the titles refer. Most of the writings concentrate on the events in Brabant and the neighbouring provinces of the Southern Netherlands; there are only a few unique pieces on the Liège Revolution.

The "Alff Collection" comprises over 600 titles compiled by the Bremen historian Prof. Wilhelm Alff (1918-1992). It was acquired by the UCL in 1983 with funds from the German Stifterverband. In 1992 it was catalogued and indexed by Bruno Haak, co-financed by the German Research Foundation.

The number of publications published during the Brabant and Liège revolutions is estimated at several thousand, so that only a small section of the pamphlet literature is collected here. For further information, please refer to the holdings of the Royal Library in Brussels. The writings of the Alff Collection were digitised in the UCL Cologne between 2008 and 2009. The catalogues and descriptions created by Bruno Haak were taken over for indexing. The table of contents are structured in such a way that they first name the subject or the reason for the publication, then the contents of the writing are summarized. Comments are generally avoided.