Treasury of Knowledge

The origins of the imperial court library, the predecessor of today’s Austrian National Library, can be traced back to medieval Europe. In 1368, Johannes von Troppau, the canon of Brno, completed an elaborately decorated book for the Habsburg Duke Albrecht III. It is entirely written in gold letters and adorned with miniatures and fully illuminated pages. The first important work commissioned by an Austrian duke, this object was the starting point of the Habsburg family’s book collection and is thus regarded as the Austrian National Library’s foundation codex. The motto "A.E.I.O.U." and the year 1444 show that the Codex was also once in the possession of Frederick III. (1415-1493), at that time Roman-German king.

Maximilian I (1459–1519), known as the "Last Knight", succeeded his father, Frederick III, as King of the Romans in 1493, and as Holy Roman Emperor in 1508. He himself was the author and co-author of works related to his biography and systematically added to his father’s library. Fervently interested in the arts and sciences, he was in contact with leading contemporary scholars and artists.



His sophisticated book projects included such works as “Theuerdank” (a biographical novel about his journey to his bride in Burgundy) and “The White King” which both can be seen in the exhibition.

His most important task was to draw an inventory of the holdings, so Blotius set up an index by authors. At the beginning of Blotius’s term of office, the library comprised about 7,400 volumes manuscripts and rare books

A decisive turning point in the history of the imperial library occurred in the eighteenth century. In 1722, Emperor Charles VI initiated the construction of a library in today’s Josefsplatz. After the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and the Turkish Wars he realised a building project that had already been planned by his father, Leopold I. Based on plans by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, the library was built by the latter’s son, Joseph Emanuel Fischer von Erlach, between 1723 and 1726.

Until the 19th century, manuscripts, early prints, maps, globes, music manuscripts, autographs, hand drawings and more were housed in the State Hall with its side cabinets. The library of Prince Eugene of Savoy was one of the most valuable collections then and now. It included not only about 15,000 books, which are now set up in the middle oval of the State Hall, but also a unique piece of world renown: the Tabula Peutingeriana, a medieval copy of an ancient map depicting the road network of the Roman Empire. It has been included in the UNESCO world register “Memory of the World” in 2007. The Tabula Peutingeriana can be seen as an “exhibit of the month” in the State Hall in November 2018.

Franz I. (1786-1835) was not only the first emperor of Austria, but also the first Habsburg emperor, who systematically collected art works. He was interested in portraits of direct contemporaries from politics and the military as well as city views and nature portraits. Matthias Schmutzer was hired by him as a painter and in 30 years, the artist captured around 1,300 plants of the imperial gardens in magnificent watercolors. But Schmutzer also worked as an animal painter for the Emperor and portrayed elephants, tigers and other exotic animals of the menagerie in Schönbrunn, which he put into fantastic landscapes. The exhibition shows some of his colorful works.

In 1878/79, numerous random antique papyrus depots were found in Egypt and bought by a Viennese antique dealer. The Orientalist Josef von Karabacek recognized the importance of this discovery and brought approx. 10,000 papyri to Vienna. Archduke Rainer decided to acquire and expand this collection. Later he donated it to his uncle Emperor Franz Joseph I, who in turn incorporated it as a special collection into the Court Library. Therefore, the exhibition can show objects like this letter from the 12th century in which a wealthy cairo muslim woman is accusing her husband of playing around with her. Today, the papyrus is one of the largest of its kind in the world and was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The First World War was a caesura for the Court Library, which lost its clear function as the central library of the Austrian Empire. Its transfer to state ownership having raised the question of a suitable name, the Cabinet Council resolved in 1920 that it should bear the name “National Library”. It was only after 1945 that the name was changed to “Austrian National Library”.

In the 1920s, the National Library considered itself to be in particular the symbolic representative of the German-speaking minorities in the successor states of Austria Hungary. The integration of the International Esperanto Museum into the National Library in 1928 can be seen as a symbol of the fact that the Library, despite its adoption of a German national position, had not entirely abandoned its transnational tradition.

The famous 1857 handwritten letter by Emperor Franz Joseph I (reigned 1848–1916) on the construction of the Ringstrasse includes a proposal for the building of a new Court Library. In the plan approved in 1859 the Library was to be located on the outer Burgplatz, today’s Heldenplatz. However, the construction was never implemented as well as the design of the architect Werner Theiss. In 1933 he proposed building a central library, an utopian design in the form of a skyscraper, intended to combine the libraries of the Technical University and the University of Vienna with the National Library.

Following preliminary studies extending back as far as 1962, the book storage facility under the Burggarten was finally put into operation in 1992. Books that were published after 1850 are being stored here on four floors.

… and in 2015 the establishment of the Literature Museum in the "Grillparzerhaus" in Johannesgasse. The Literature Museum shows that literature also includes much that does not fit between two book covers: original manuscripts, photos, posters, films, sound recordings as well as traces of everyday life and extraordinary archive finds relating to major Austrian authors. These include for instance Ernst Jandl’s shopping list with the food and everyday goods that always had to be at hand, an official residence confirmation of Ingeborg Bachmann, or a letter by Peter Handke written on the bark of a birch tree.

From January 26, 2018 to January 13, 2019 more than 170 valuable objects do not only tell the story of 650 years of library history, but also the history of Austria. We hope to see you soon at the State Hall.