UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

Historical book collections in the Zülpich city archive

Markt 21
53909 Zülpich

Tel.: +49 2252 52202
Fax: +49 2252 52299

E-Mail:
Internet: www.zuelpich.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=76&Itemid=128

Bibliothekssigel: Zlp1 = O9037

Contact person:
Rita Reibold

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The Zülpich Museum, located in the former "Propstei" on the Mühlenberg ("Propsteimuseum") since 1920, also housed the historical archive and the municipal library until the death of the teacher and founding director Paul Hubert Pesch in 1970. After that, the voluntary position remained unfilled. Since 1978, the holdings of the Stadtmuseum and the city archive, which had been established in the meantime, have been inventoried with the support of the specialist offices of the Landschaftsverband Rheinland. In 1978, Artur Elicker, an archivist in charge of this task, discovered a small collection of old books in the museum, which he later added to the municipal archive. The collection consists of approx. 130 titles in 85 volumes. The main focus of the collection is on the 17th and 18th centuries; both are represented by around 45 works. From the 16th century there are also about 30 works. Three titles from the 19th century and an incunabulum (Jordanus von Quedlinburg: "Sermones de Sanctis", Strasbourg 1484) complete the collection, which is predominantly in Latin and contains mainly German texts. About 50 titles carry a property entry from the library of the Capuchins. Another 40 titles have property records of private individuals, most of whom belong to the clergy, but laypersons are also represented. Considering the fact that in many cases up to four previous owners are mentioned in the volumes that were finally donated to the monastery and that the first entries date back to the 16th century, we get a good insight into the history of book ownership in an entire region. With one exception from Antwerp, the owners all come from numerous small communities in the Eifel and the Eifel foothills. Theology, with its special disciplines, forms the main focus of this collection. Other disciplines - rhetoric, law, history and philosophy - are represented with a few works, perhaps a dozen in all, but then with great names: Aristotle, Cicero, Livius, Pufendorf. This "principle" seems to be continued in theology: important, but also very different theologians like Jeremias Drexel, who can be counted among the popular writers of edification, the mystic Luis de Granada, the controversial theologian Robert Bellarmin, the church lawyer Pierre Stockmans and the moral theologian Hermann Busenbaum are also represented with one, at most two works. However, three focal points can be identified in the collection: 1. Approximately 20 works offer religious reflections and sermons, which are structured in the sequence of the church year. 2 About a dozen works are editions of the Bible and its parts or commentaries on these texts. 3. Just as many titles belong to the devotion and prayer books in the narrower sense. Thus, the value of this collection lies mainly in the field of practical theology.