UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

Collections of the Franciscan library in the Mönchengladbach municipal library

Blücherstr. 6
41050 Mönchengladbach

Tel.: +49 2161 256340

E-Mail: Stadtbibliothek@moenchengladbach.de
Internet: https://www.moenchengladbach.de/de/franziskanerbibliothek

Library abbreviation: 260 = Z9022

Contact person:
Guido Weyer

Katalog starten

On 10 January 2003, the Cologne Franciscan Province and the City of Mönchengladbach signed a contract under which the City Library received the largest part of the old collection of the Central Library "Science and Wisdom", approx. 4,500 volumes of the 16th to early 19th centuries, as gifts. In return, the municipal library pledged to maintain and develop the holdings. While the cataloguing of the collection was completed in 2007, book patrons for the restoration of damaged volumes (link in German) are still needed until further notice. Individual works stand out from the collection, which is naturally strongly influenced by Catholic theology, mostly in Latin. Thus the only volume from the old Gladbach Abbey Library which the library "Wissenschaft und Weisheit" possessed, a Cologne edition of Aulus Gellius' "Noctes Atticae" from 1549, now supplements the small urban collection of this provenance. Numerous works of Franciscan theologians such as Anaclet Reiffenstuel, Bonaventura or Thomas de Charmes are represented, but also those of Dominicans and Jesuits. Individual titles by Protestant theologians (Luther, Melanchthon) complete the collection, as well as several philosophical works. The Italian plays of the 18th century in French ("Le théatre italien". Amsterdam 1697; "Le nouveau théatre italien". 1729) and the works of critical to anticlerical enlighteners (René Descartes. "Principia Philosophiae"; "Specimina Philosophiae"; "Passiones animae". Everything: Amsterdam: J. Blaeu 1685; Jean-Baptiste Louis Gresset. "Oeuvres", T. 2. London: Kermaleck 1751). In addition, there is a smaller collection of literature on history and classical philology. Even more important for the collection in general are the provenances of the volumes. For a long time now, the Central Library had been holding collections from dissolved monasteries or parts of collections that were no longer needed from existing branches. The donation brought considerable holdings from the Franciscan monasteries in Düsseldorf and on the Apollinarisberg in Remagen, but above all parts of the old convent library from Neviges-Hardenberg to Mönchengladbach, which, like the convent, ultimately survived secularisation undamaged. In addition, many families and citizens of the Mönchengladbach area may be among the previous owners of the books, which once again makes the library interesting as a source of the history of Mönchengladbach.