UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

Westerholt - Noblesse oblige - An aristocratic library

The Westerholt Collection is a little-known collection of educational and entertainment literature from the late 18th century in the UCL Cologne, based on books from a Rhenish aristocratic library. The subsequent designation "Westerholt Collection" is explained by the largest single provenance of the collection, the book collection of Countess Wilhelmine von Westerholt.

The majority of the 444 bibliographical units come from Arenfels Castle in Bad Hönningen (Neuwied district), which was acquired by the Westphalian noble family of Westerholt in the middle of the 19th century. In 1951 the family dissolved the library and sold it at a book auction. In this way part of the travel literature was transferred to the UCL Cologne and part of the fiction to the library of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne, which later (1961) donated it to the UCL.

The literary and book-historical speciality of the collection lies in the fact that it mainly contains popular novels and Enlightenment literature from the period 1770 to 1830. Most of the texts are forgotten today, although they are important for a proper understanding of the literary production and reader interests of Goethe's time.