61 MARCH 2015: VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1 • THEOLOGICAL LIBRARIANSHIP theolib.org Klostersturm and Secularization in Central Europe: What Happened to the Libraries? by Jeffrey Garrett In this bibliographic essay, I look at central European monastic library confiscations — commonly called “secularizations” — at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, a topic that will require some re-orientation for Anglo- American readers. In the English-speaking world as in the tradition of Anglo-American historiography, when we think of “secularization” as an historical process we naturally think first of the actions of Henry VIII during the Reformation, mainly between 1532 and 1540: his suppression of the Roman Catholic Church in England, his confiscation of church property — including church archives, manuscripts, and the still relatively few numbers of printed books. Similar secularizations occurred in other European regions during the 16th century, mostly in Scandinavia and northern and eastern Germany. Beneficiaries of these secularizations were the royal treasuries along with the coffers, libraries, and archives of aristocratic courts, wealthy cities, universities, certain individuals, and of course, the new Protestant-Lutheran clerical order. However, 250 years after the Reformation, a new wave of church property confiscation swept through predominantly Catholic Europe — a phenomenon of incomparably greater magnitude and arguably greater historical and cultural significance. The countries affected extended from Spain and Portugal in the southwest — with their respective New World and Asian dominions — to Silesia, Poland, the then-powerful Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Ukraine in the northeast and east of Europe. The cultural importance of this second secularization wave was amplified by the vastly greater size of libraries and archives in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, reflecting 300 years during which the printing press had caused several magnitudes of increase in the quantity and geographic distribution of publications — and the resulting transformation of knowledge culture in Europe. “After Gutenberg,” writes Albert Manguel, “for the first time in history, hundreds of readers possessed identical copies of the same book, and . . . the book read by someone in Madrid was the same book read by someone in Montpellier.”1 This more modern reading culture had not been in place during the Reformation of the mid-16th century, when libraries and archives had been secularized before. I will be discussing the literature that exists describing the end of monastic book culture in German-speaking Europe during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was also the era that gave rise to the modern research library — no coincidence, since the organization of the large amounts of books flowing from the dissolved, “secularized” monasteries into the hands of the state could not be dealt with in traditional ways, which regularly involved the highly trained memory of librarians and the visual display of books. It is notable and symbolic that “Bibliothek-Wissenschaft,” or “library science,” was developed by a secularized Benedictine monk named Martin Schrettinger (1772–1851). It is also a testimony to the significance of his contribution that his extra-mnemonic, theory-based approach to organizing vast amounts of information has served us well to this day. Monastic library secularization and the invention of a “science” of librarianship were two halves of a single transformation in the European — and ultimately the world’s — library landscape. Between March 22 and 24, 2012, scholars from across Europe and North America convened in Oxford for the conference “How the Secularization of Religious Houses Transformed the Libraries of Europe,” the first scholarly meeting in recent decades to treat the late 18th–early 19th century transformation of the libraries of Europe as a single, albeit highly 1 Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (London: Flamingo, 1997), 137–38. Jeffrey Garrett recently retired as Associate University Librarian for Special Libraries at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. 62 MARCH 2015: VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1 • THEOLOGICAL LIBRARIANSHIP theolib.org diversified, phenomenon. Papers were presented in a host of languages, among them French and Italian, Polish and Portuguese. Editing these papers, which also entails the reconciliation of terminology from different languages and different historiographical traditions for similar but locally individuated historical phenomena, surely explains why the proceedings of this conference have not yet appeared in publication.2 My role at the Oxford conference was to provide an overview of the expropriation of monastic libraries in Catholic Central Europe, 1773–1814. This upheaval took place in three phases: the suppression of the Jesuits and their worldwide institutions in and immediately after 1773; the Josephine suppressions (or Klostersturm) of the 1780s in Austria, affecting the far-flung possessions of the Habsburg Empire; and, finally and most significantly, the often violent suppression of religious orders during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, 1789 to 1814, emanating from France but affecting most of Europe. Before this period and even during it, the monasteries of Central Europe numbered in the many thousands. Hundreds of them were wealthy, with fabulous libraries housed in spectacular Baroque and Rococo buildings built specifically for the purpose. The central European monasteries of the prelate orders — Benedictines, Cistercians, Augustinian Canons, and Premonstratensians — and the colleges of the Jesuits almost all had libraries of note, with holdings often numbering in the tens of thousands of volumes.3 Perhaps the most prominent of these in Germany, representing hundreds of others, was Polling, an Augustinian Canon abbey in Upper Bavaria between Munich and the Alps, with close to 80,000 volumes, not far from the ancient Benedictine abbeys of Tegernsee and Benediktbeuern, dating from the early Middle Ages and by the time under discussion already a thousand years old, with between 25,000 and 40,000 volumes each.4 Württemberg’s abbeys also had significant libraries, among them the Cistercian abbey of Salem, with 40,000 to 60,000 volumes.5 Along the Rhine, from Freiburg to Cologne and in Catholic Westphalia, monastic collections were also notable, including those of Corvey and Klarholz.6 Finally, in politically and confessionally complex Switzerland we find several of Europe’s oldest and richest monastery libraries, among them St. Gallen and Einsiedeln, both Benedictine. But the institutions named here are only several of the most salient, and even smaller monasteries often had libraries of note. The single Swiss canton of Thurgau, for example, had had at least nineteen monasteries during the preceding thousand years, of which at least nine survived until well into the 19th century — and they all had libraries.7 Or to focus on Bavaria, probably the most heavily researched Central European region, modern estimates have placed the total number of books in the libraries of the prelate orders alone at 1.2 million. Even the property-shunning mendicant orders — again just considering Bavaria — had an estimated 342,000 volumes by 1800.8 2 Abstracts of all papers are available online at http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/find-resources/projects/how-the-secularization- of-religious-houses-transformed-the-libraries-of-europe. 3 On the “foundational role” of the monasteries, their monks, and their libraries for the scholarly life of Bavaria by 1800, see Dieter Kudorfer, “Die Säkularisation und das Bibliothekswesen: Traditionsbruch und Neuanfang für die Wissenschaft,” Lebendiges BücherErbe: Säkularisation, Mediatisierung und die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, ed. Dieter Kudorfer, Ausstellungskataloge (Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 2003). 4 ___ , “Die Säkularisation und das Bibliothekswesen,” 10–11. 5 Gerhard Römer, Bücher, Stifter, Bibliotheken: Buchkultur zwischen Neckar und Bodensee (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1997). 6 Johannes Meier, “Spurensuche: Die Bibliothek des Klosters Clarholz im Lichte ihrer individuellen Provenienzen,”Die Bibliothek des Prämonstratenserklosters Clarholz: Bestandskatalog von Elke Pophanken mit Beiträgen von Johannes Meier und Ursula Olschewski, ed. Reinhard Feldmann, Schriften der Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Münster (Münster: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Münster, 1996); Johannes Meier, “... wie die geistlichen Herren in den meisten Zweigen der Wissenschaft und der Literatur wohl bewandert und mit ihrer Zeit fortgeschritten waren: Zum geistigen und religiösen Standort des adligen Clarholzer Prämonstratenserkonventes in den letzten Jahrzehnten vor der Säkularisation der alten Reichskirche,” Analecta Praemonstratensia 73 (1997). 7 Most Swiss monasteries were secularized in 1848. See Marianne Luginbühl and Heinz Bothien, “Auch Bücher haben ihr Schicksal” Die Geschichte der thurgauischen Klosterbibliotheken seit dem 19. Jahrhundert (Frauenfeld: Thurgauische Kantonsbibliothek, 1999). 8 Ladislaus Buzás, German Library History, 800–1945, trans. William D. Boyd (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1986), 159–60. http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/find-resources/projects/how-the-secularization-of-religious-houses-transformed-the-libraries-of-europe http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/csb/find-resources/projects/how-the-secularization-of-religious-houses-transformed-the-libraries-of-europe 63 BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY: KLOSTERSTURM AND SECULARIZATION IN CENTRAL EUROPE theolib.org In little more than forty years, between July 1773, when Pope Clement XIV, with his brief Dominus ac Redemptor, formally abolished the Society of Jesus, and the last monastery secularization mandated by the Principal Decree of the Imperial Deputation (Reichsdeputations hauptschluss) of 1803, namely the dissolution of Höglwörth near Salzburg in 1817,9 most of the medieval book infrastructure of Europe disappeared from the map. It would be replaced by a totally new “order of books,” as Roger Chartier has called knowledge cultures,10 one characterized by huge state-owned collections and smaller regional and university libraries with increasing relevance for science and teaching, a knowledge infrastructure that remained in place for the next 200 years — that is, until the digital revolution of the present day largely lifted the constraints of location and time from scholarly access to information. The literature describing this process in Central Europe does not exist to any significant degree in English, though there are exceptions. Several works by Derek Beales in both monograph and article formats are essential introductory reading for understanding the Austrian Klostersturm, which had its roots in the reign of Maria Theresa (1717–1780) and then during the fifteen years of her joint regency with son Joseph — later Emperor Joseph II.11 Jacob Soll’s recent important work on the early modern information regimes of France and Italy, especially his 2009 book The Information Master, discusses the movement of knowledge repositories from ecclesiastical-aristocratic centers to state control in the 17th and 18th centuries, but does not cover the mass secularizations elsewhere in Europe during the period treated so extensively at the 2012 Oxford conference.12 The earliest treatments in English center on Bavaria. They are Ernest Oscar Thedinga’s Ph.D. dissertation from 193513 and then Edwin Heyse Dummer’s research of the mid 1940s and 50s, focusing on the most famous secularizer of ecclesiastical libraries in Germany, Johann Christoph von Aretin (1773–1824).14 For the implications of monastic library secularization, Sidney L. Jackson recognized the great importance of Martin Schrettinger for the history of classification and library arrangement in two articles on this important library theorist from the early 1970s, but neglects to give proper credit to Schrettinger for actually and physically organizing the hundreds of thousands of books that flowed to the state from the monasteries (including his own, Weissenohe near Regensburg15) in the early 19th century.16 The most recent articles in English — to my knowledge there are no monographs, not even translations of principal German-language works — are two of my own, one of them published in the proceedings of the conference 9 Cornelia Jahn, “Mühsam erworbene Schätze: Der Ablauf der Büchersäkularisation,” Lebendiges BücherErbe: Säkularisation, Mediatisierung und die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, ed. Dieter Kudorfer, Ausstellungskataloge (Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 2003), 27. 10 Roger Chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). 11 Beales’s two-volume biography of Joseph II is foundational here: Derek Beales, Joseph II, vol. 1: In the Shadow of Maria Theresa, 1741–1780 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); ___ , Joseph II, vol. 2: Against the World 1780–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). On the Klostersturm, see esp. vol. 2, ch. 8, “Josephism Rampant I: Monasteries, General Seminaries and Parishes,” p. 271–306. Beales has also written on Joseph’s critically important early education: ___, “Christians and ‘philosophes’: The Case of the Austrian Enlightenment,” History, Society and the Churches: Essays in Honour of Owen Chadwick, eds. Derek Beales and Geoffrey Best (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 12 Cf. Jacob Soll, “Library of Power, Library of Enlightenment: Libraries as Foundations to the Modern State 1400–1800,” Edward G. Holley Lecture sponsored by the ALA Library History Roundtable, Chicago, June 30, 2013. 13 Ernest Oscar Thedinga, “Secularization in Bavaria during the Napoleonic Era,” Ph.D. Thesis, University of Wisconsin– Madison, 1935. 14 Edwin Heyse Dummer, “Johann Christoph von Aretin and the Library Scene in Bavaria in the Secularization Period 1802– 1811,” M.A. Thesis, University of Chicago, 1944; ___ , “Johann Christoph von Aretin: A Re-evaluation,” Library Quarterly 16.2 (1946). 15 Ilse Haeckel, “Schrettinger und die Säkularisation des Klosters Weissenohe,” Aus der Arbeit des Bibliothekars: Aufsätze und Abhandlungen Fritz Redenbacher zum 60. Geburtstag dargebracht, ed. Bernhard Sinogowitz (Erlangen: Universitäts-Bibliothek, 1960). 16 Sidney L. Jackson, “Schrettinger on Class and the Subject Heading: A Note on Early Nineteenth-Century Thinking,” Library Resources & Technical Services 14.4 (Fall) (1970); ___, “Pioneer Librarianship Thinking in the Early Nineteenth Century: Schrettinger, Ebert and Molbech,” International Library Review 3 (1971). 64 MARCH 2015: VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1 • THEOLOGICAL LIBRARIANSHIP theolib.org “The Contributions of Monastic Orders to the Catholic Enlightenment” in Piliscsaba, Hungary in the late 1990s17 and Friedrich Buchmayr’s overview of the Josephine confiscations in Austria published in the proceedings of the “Lost Libraries” conference in Cambridge in 2000.18 Michael Buckland’s writings on the importance of library schools and library science also deserve mention since he specifically addresses the reconfiguration of the German library landscape in this period.19 So the balance of this literature survey will be focusing on scholarship available only in German. May it serve as a minor consolation that this body of research material is almost all available in or through North American research libraries. Treatment will also not be (nor could it be) comprehensive, but will instead highlight certain types of research with notable examples. Also, since this topic has been studied and written about now for at least 150 years and some of the most important work was done in the 19th century, many of the works referenced are quite old. Research genres we will present below are 1.) anniversary publications, comprehensive studies, regional studies; 2.) studies of individual monastic libraries; 3.) biographies. Anniversary Publications, Comprehensive Studies, and Regional Studies In Europe, anniversaries are usually the occasion for sweeping reviews of historical events and periods as well as massive, often government-funded retrospective exhibitions. For Austria, 1980 marked the 200th anniversary of Joseph II’s ascendancy to sole regency of the Empire — he had ruled until then (and since 1765) jointly with his mother, Maria Theresa. A major exhibit at Melk Abbey to honor this occasion was organized by the government of Lower Austria for which a massive collection of essays — the catalog was 718 pages long, with 45 color plates — was commissioned, under the general editorship of the premier Austrian historian of that era, Karl Gutkas.20 One of the articles was entitled “Josephine Monastery Closures, 1782–1789,”21 reflecting that an entire room of the exhibit had been dedicated to this subject.22 Yet a detailed discussion of the migration of library resources was not included in this volume. An oversight perhaps, understandable since Melk’s library has never been compromised by any government or invading army, with the possible exception of some of Napoleon’s generals.23 Also, in Austria, research into the disappearance of medieval libraries has always been conducted at the regional (Land) level — as we will see further below. In southern Germany, the 200th anniversary of the Säkularisation, which began in 1803, was an occasion for major state- funded exhibitions and research projects. By contrast to Austria, these did look specifically — and often critically — at the fate of libraries and library books. The catalog of the major commemorative exhibition in the Regensburg Historical Museum, which took place between May and August of 2003, included a chapter on the fate of Regensburg libraries.24 The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Bavarian State Library), one of the principal beneficiaries of the secularization of monastery books (in fact becoming for a time the second greatest library in Europe after the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris25) released a 17 Jeffrey Garrett, “Redefining Order in the German Library, 1775–1825,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 33.1 (Fall) (1999); ___, “Aufhebung im doppelten Wortsinn: The Fate of Monastic Libraries in Central Europe, 1780–1810,” Verbum Analecta Neolatina 2 (1999). 18 Friedrich Buchmayr, “Secularization and Monastic Libraries in Austria,” Lost Libraries: The Destruction of Great Book Collections since Antiquity, ed. James Raven (Basingstoke, Hants.; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 19 Michael K. Buckland, “Information Schools: A Monk, Library Science, and the Information Age,” Bibliothekswissenschaft - quo vadis? / Library Science - quo Vadis?, ed. Petra Hauke (Munich: K.G. Sauer, 2005), 19-32. 20 Karl Gutkas, ed., Österreich zur Zeit Kaiser Josephs II: Mitregent Kaiserin Maria Theresias, Kaiser und Landesfürst (Wien: Amt der Niederösterreichischen Landesregierung, Abt. 3/2, Kulturabteilung, 1980). 21 Elisabeth Kovács, “Josephinische Klosteraufhebungen 1782–1789,” Österreich zur Zeit Kaiser Josephs II. 22 Gutkas, ed., Österreich zur Zeit Kaiser Josephs II, 533–538. 23 I have not investigated this period of Melk’s history. 24 Michael Drucker, “Regensburger Bibliotheken: Schicksale zwischen Reichsstadtzeit und Königreich,” 1803, Wende in Europas Mitte: Vom feudalen zum bürgerlichen Zeitalter: Begleitband zur Ausstellung im Historischen Museum Regensburg, 29. Mai bis 24. August 2003, eds. Peter Schmid and Klemens Unger (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2003). 25 Hermann Hauke, “Die Bedeutung der Säkularisation für die bayerischen Bibliotheken,” Glanz und Ende der alten Klöster: Säkularisation im bayerischen Oberland 1803, eds. Josef Kirmeier and Manfred Treml, Veröffentlichungen zur Bayerischen Geschichte und Kultur; 21 (Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1991), 94–96. 65 BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY: KLOSTERSTURM AND SECULARIZATION IN CENTRAL EUROPE theolib.org wonderful collection of essays specifically on the fate of monastery books in a volume with the (translated) title “Living Book Legacy: Secularization, Mediatization, and the Bavarian State Library.”26 Two other publications tied to the bicentennial also deserve mention, namely the first comprehensive census of monasteries, abbeys, convents, and hermitages ever undertaken in Bavaria, complete with a detailed folding map,27 and then Engelbert Plassmann’s harvest of all anniversary publications that were released having to do specifically with libraries in all parts of Germany, delivered as a public lecture at Berlin’s Humboldt University in February 2004.28 This is by no means an exhaustive list — in fact, it is highly selective — but it does give a sense for the number and diversity of these publications. Apart from anniversary publications, several works stand out as efforts to be comprehensive treatments of the fate of monastic libraries for specific states or regions. In Austria, the approach is, as mentioned above, almost always regional, which is understandable given the vast size of the Habsburg Empire in the 18th century. The standard work on the dissolutions and dispositions of monasteries and their libraries during the reign of Joseph II in German-speaking Austria is Adam Wolf ’s Die Aufhebung der Klöster in Innerösterreich (“The Suppression of Monasteries in Austria Proper”) of 1871.29 Another older work worthy of mention that covers specifically Upper Austria — whose principal metropolis is Linz on the Danube — during the 1780s is Rudolf Hittmair’s densely detailed monograph of 1907, the translated title of which is “The Josephine Assault on Monasteries in the Territories Upstream from the Enns.”30 Other Habsburg regions have been covered in detail in works by Strassmayr (“Fates of Upper Austrian Monastery Libraries”) and Karnthaler (“The Fate of Tirolean Monastery Libraries between 1773 and 1790”) in the middle of the last century.31 Simon Laschitzer wrote two important articles in the 1880s, one looking at libraries in the entire Austrian Empire (“The Edicts on the Libraries and Archives of the Suppressed Monasteries of Austria”), the other focusing specifically on the province of Carinthia.32 Christine Tropper’s more recent study brings together much research and is indispensable for Lower Austria, i.e., the German-speaking region along the Danube upstream from Vienna.33 Regional treatments are also plentiful in Germany. The diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, for example, published a thin (91 pages) but excellent (though not impartial!) collection of essays in 1988 on the confiscation and disposition of Swabian monastery libraries, entitled (in English translation) “‘And Now We Must Let Be Stolen . . .’: On the Dissolution of Swabian Monastery Libraries.”34 By far the most ambitious project, never completed, was Paul Ruf ’s research on the secularization of Bavarian monastery libraries, published in 1962 as (Engl.) “Secularization and the Bavarian State Library.”35 Although Ruf only managed to publish the first volume of his work, covering the period ending in 1802, i.e., just before the major thrust 26 Dieter Kudorfer, ed., Lebendiges BücherErbe: Säkularisation, Mediatisierung und die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Munich: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 2003). 27 Rainer Braun, Klöster in Bayern um 1800: Eine Bestandsaufnahme, Forum Heimatforschung: Ziele, Wege, Ergebnisse (Munich: Bayerischer Landesverein für Heimatpflege e.V., 2005). 28 Engelbert Plassmann, Büchervernichtung, Bücherverschiebung, neuer Aufbruch: Eine Nachlese zum Säkularisationsjubiläum 2003, Berliner Arbeiten zur Bibliothekswissenschaft (Berlin: Logos, 2005). 29 Adam Wolf, Die Aufhebung der Klöster in Innerösterreich 1782–1790: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte Kaiser Joseph‘s II (Vienna: Braumüller, 1871). 30 Rudolf Hittmair, Der Josefinische Klostersturm im Land ob der Enns (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1907). 31 Eduard Straßmayr, “Schicksale oberösterreichischer Klosterbibliotheken,” Oberösterreichische Heimatblätter 1 (1947); Franz Karnthaler, “Das Schicksal der Tiroler Klosterbibliotheken in den Jahren 1773–1790,” Biblos 5 (1956). 32 Simon Laschitzer, “Die Verordnungen über die Bibliotheken und Archive der aufgehobenen Klöster in Österreich,” Mittheilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichte 2 (1881); ___, “Geschichte der Klosterbibliotheken und Archive Kärntens zur Zeit ihrer Aufhebung unter Kaiser Josef II,” Carinthia: Zeitschrift für Vaterlandskunde, Belehrung und Unterhaltung 73.6–8 (1883). 33 Christiane Tropper, “Schicksale der Büchersammlungen niederösterreichischer Klöster nach der Aufhebung durch Joseph II. und Franz (II.) I.,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung 91 (1983). 34 Theodor Heuser, ed., “. . . und muß nun rauben lassen . . .”: Zur Auflösung schwäbischer Klosterbibliotheken (Stuttgart: Akademie der Diözese Rottenburg-Stuttgart, 1988). 35 Paul Ruf, Säkularisation und Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, vol. I: Die Bibliotheken der Mendikanten und Theatiner (1799–1802) (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1962). 66 MARCH 2015: VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1 • THEOLOGICAL LIBRARIANSHIP theolib.org of secularizations began in 1803, he sets the stage very well, introducing all of the principal figures important for Bavaria. His character sketch of Johann Christoph von Aretin is especially noteworthy, indispensable for an understanding of this man’s character and many passions, which in turn go far to explain the singular and turbulent fate of monastic books in Bavaria over the following half century, especially in the capital of Munich36 but also all across the kingdom.37 A final work that is useful as an overview and introduction to the Säkularisation in Bavaria, though sometimes too popularly written to reconcile the many divergent versions of events and the complexities of the central characters, is Dietmar Stutzer’s work of 1990, whose title translates as “The Secularization of 1803: The Assault on Bavaria’s Churches and Monasteries.”38 Studies of Individual Monastic Libraries The suppression and secularization of monasteries and the disposition of their libraries all come alive not so much in these overviews, but rather in the accounts and retrospectives depicting the fates of individual monastery collections. These publications are often tied to exhibits of grand or lesser scale. Several dissolutions are very well documented, for example, those of the Austrian monasteries Gaming,39 Mauerbach,40 Mondsee,41 and St. Paul,42 and then many in Bavaria, among them Benediktbeuern,43 Ottobeuren,44 and the libraries of several notable monasteries — and the prince-bishop’s own library — in the bishopric of Passau.45 For me, some of the most notable (and, often, most moving) documents describe the end of relatively small ecclesiastical libraries, and the removal, sale (often at auction), or destruction of their holdings. The very tiny library at Ardagger in Austria was sold at auction on August 20, 1787, a sale that has been carefully studied and documented by a Benedictine researcher, Bernhard Wagner, O.S.B.46 Another story that has been related in detail is that 36 Eva Schrepf, „Die Bayerische Hofbibliothek (Staatsbibliothek) 1803–1843. Versuch einer Skizze ihrer Geschichte,“ M.A., Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, 1989; Bettina Wagner, „Dublettenauktionen der Münchener Hofbibliothek in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts,“ Aus dem Antiquariat (2006). 37 Gerhard Heyl, „Der Verkauf der Klosterbibliothek Benediktbeuern 1832–1841: Vornehmlich nach Akten des bayerischen Kriegsarchivs,“ Mitteilungen für die Archivpflege in Bayern 24 (1978). 38 Dietmar Stutzer, Die Säkularisation 1803: Der Sturm auf Bayerns Kirchen und Klöster, Rosenheimer Raritäten, 3rd, expanded ed. (Rosenheim: Rosenheimer, 1990). 39 Brunhilde Hoffmann, Die Aufhebung der Kartause Gaming, Analecta Cartusiana, 58 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1981). 40 W. Boguth, „Die Aufhebung der Kartause Mauerbach: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Josefinischen Klosteraufhebung,“ Jahrbuch für Landeskunde von Niederösterreich (1902); Helmuth Feigl, „Die wirtschaftlichen Hintergründe der Aufhebung der nierösterreichischen Kartäuserklöster,“ Die Kartäuser in Österreich, ed. James Hogg, vol. 2 (Salzburg: 1981). 41 Hertha Awecker, „Die Aufhebung der Benediktinerabtei Mondsee 1791: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Josephinismus im Lande ob der Enns,“ Diss., Graz, 1948. 42 Waltraud Krassnig, „Die Aufhebung des Stiftes 1782–1787,“ Schatzhaus Kärntens: Landesausstellung St. Paul 1991: 900 Jahre Benediktinerstift, eds. Günther Hödl and Johannes Grabmayer, vol. 2: Beiträge (Klagenfurt: Universitätsverlag, 1991); Laschitzer, „Geschichte der Klosterbibliotheken und Archive Kärntens zur Zeit ihrer Aufhebung unter Kaiser Josef II.“ 43 Heyl, „Der Verkauf der Klosterbibliothek Benediktbeuern 1832–1841:Vornehmlich nach Akten des bayerischen Kriegsarchivs.“; Wolfgang Jahn, „Die Aufhebung des Klosters Benediktbeuern,“ Glanz und Ende der alten Klöster. Säkularisation im bayerischen Oberland 1803, eds. Josef Kirmeier and Manfred Treml, Veröffentlichungen zur Bayerischen Geschichte und Kultur, 21 (Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1991). 44 J. Rottenkolber, „Die Schicksale der Ottobeurener Klosterbibliothek in der Säkularisation,“ Memminger Geschichtsblätter 18.2 (1932). 45 Maria Bernarda Wagner, „Die Säkularisation der Klöster im Gebiet der heutigen Stadt Passau 1802–1836,“ Diss., Universität München, 1935; Dietmar Stutzer, „Die Bibliothek von St. Nikola,“ Bayerland 81.9 (1979). Again, the referenced literature is only a representative sample of the published research on these monasteries. 46 Benedikt Wagner, O.S.B., „Der Religionsfonds versteigert eine alte Stiftsbibliothek,“ Translatio studii. Manuscript and Library Studies Honoring Oliver L. Kapsner, O.S.B., ed. Julian G. Plante (Collegeville, MN: St. John’s University Press, 1973). I discuss the Ardagger auction in my (English-language) contribution to the Oxford conference proceedings, “The Expropriation of Monastic Libraries in Central Europe, 1773–1817,” forthcoming. Suffice it to say here that the most valuable holdings were added to the Hofbibliothek in Vienna, while many other valuable items were acquired by representatives of Seitenstetten Abbey, 67 BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY: KLOSTERSTURM AND SECULARIZATION IN CENTRAL EUROPE theolib.org of Kloster Schäftlarn in Bavaria, the very first monastery to be dissolved outside of Munich, in April of 1803. That story was recounted by Aretin in his diaries,47 but also, 188 years later, by the monks of Schäftlarn — the abbey was restored to the Benedictines in 1866 — in an exhibit and a handmade, stapled catalog from 1991.48 In the introductory essay to this catalog, the author, identified only by his initials “M.R.,” emphatically, though respectfully, takes issue with the official version of the Secularization which proceeded from the Bavarian government of those years, which was that shipping all the monastery books to Munich saved them from perhaps a worse fate.49 Amazing that after nearly two centuries, these wounds left by the destruction of monastery book culture remain open! Biographies Reference has already been made to Derek Beales’s recently completed magisterial biography of Austrian emperor Joseph II.50 Descending more to the level of the principal enactors of the process described here, Austria and Bavaria each have a signal Klosterstürmer and secularizer whose deeds are well documented in the literature, and who even today excite passions in and outside the circles of historians both inside and outside the Catholic Church. In Austria, that individual is the firebrand Josephine partisan Joseph Valentin Eybel (1741–1805), already known in Vienna as an intensely anticlerical pamphleteer51 before being put in charge of numerous monastery closures, mostly in Upper Austria. His life is described in the standard biographical dictionaries of the era, for example the massive compendium of Constantin von Wurzbach,52 but above all in the detailed biography by Manfred Brandl, which despite being dispositionally negative about Eybel’s activities still contains fascinating detail unavailable from any other source.53 Eybel’s already-mentioned Bavarian epigone of twenty years later, the equally fanatical Johann Christoph von Aretin, was well portrayed in Paul Ruf ’s work mentioned above,54 but ultimately we must turn to additional sources to round out our impression of this dominant figure of the early years of the Bavarian monastic library confiscations. This is the study compiled by distant relative Erwein von Aretin, serialized over three issues of Gelbe Hefte during the 1920s.55 I hope to have contributed some insights of my own to an understanding of Aretin’s life, specifically what he learned from his captors — and then friends — in France, where he was sent to study the disposition of confiscated French monastic libraries, held in what were called the dépôts littéraires.56 France was to become the template for his activity in Bavaria in and after 1803. The final figure of importance for an understanding of this period in Central Europe is Martin Schrettinger. It was German library historian Uwe Jochum who resurrected Schrettinger from historical oubli in his 1991 book, in English, where they reside to this day. 47 Johann Christoph Freiherr von Aretin, Briefe über meine literarische Geschäftsreise in die baierischen Abteyen: Mit einer Einführung herausgegeben von Wolf Bachmann, Bibliotheca Bavarica (Munich: Langen-Müller, 1971), 17ff. 48 Stiftsbibliothek Schäftlarn, Bücher-Schicksal: Die Säkularisation der Stiftsbibliothek Schäftlarn 1803: Ausstellung in Zusammenarbeit mit der Bayer. Staatsbibliothek und der Universitätsbibliothek München in der Stiftsbibliothek Schäftlarn, 10. Nov.–8. Dez. 1991, Ausstellungskatalog[e], 4 (Schäftlarn: Stiftsbibliothek Schäftlarn, 1991). 49 ___, Bücher-Schicksal, 18-20. 50 Called “awesome” and “monumental” in the extensive June 24, 2010, review article of vol. 2 of Joseph II by R.J.W. Evans, “The Most Dynamic Ruler,” The New York Review of Books (2010). 51 Joseph Valentin Eybel, Sieben Kapitel von Klosterleuten (Vienna: bei Joseph Edlen von Kurzbeck, 1782); Joseph Valentin von Eybel, Was ist ein Pfarrer? (Wien: Joseph Edler von Kurzbeck, 1782). 52 Constant v. Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich enthaltend die Lebensskizzen der denkwürdigen Personen, welche 1750 bis 1850 im Kaiserstaate und in seinen Kronländern gelebt haben, vol. 4 (Egervári–Füchs) (Wien: Typogr.- literar.-artist. Anstalt, 1858), 118–19. 53 Manfred Brandl, Der Kanonist Joseph Valentin Eybel (1741–1805): sein Beitrag zur Aufklärung in Österreich; eine Studie in Ideologie, Forschungen zur Geschichte der katholischen Aufklärung, 2 (Steyr: Wilhelm Ennsthaler, 1976). 54 Ruf, Säkularisation und Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 6–46. 55 Erwein von Aretin, „Christoph Freiherr von Aretin. Ein Lebensbild aus der Zeit des Ministers Montgelas,“ Gelbe Hefte 3.1 (1926). 56 Jeffrey Garrett, “Bibliophiles with an Attitude: French Influences on Bavarian Library Secularization Policy, 1800–1810,” RLA Romance Languages Annual 4 (1994). 68 MARCH 2015: VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1 • THEOLOGICAL LIBRARIANSHIP theolib.org “Libraries and Librarians, 1800 – 1900.”57 Until Jochum’s work, Schrettinger’s contribution had been underappreciated by library historians — with certain exceptions 80 years prior, e.g., by the impeccable Georg Leyh in his famous attacks on the dogma of subject-based classification schemes as the basis for organizing libraries58 and by Adolf Hilsenbeck at about the same time.59 It was Schrettinger who first asserted that the purpose of libraries is to rapidly fulfill the information needs of their patrons, not to subject them to quickly obsolescing shelving schemes or to give memorious librarians opportunities to be brilliant or leave their lasting mark on the research of the others who consult them — the image of the librarian immortalized in the figure of Jorge of Burgos in Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose.60 Schrettinger’s “handbook” was republished recently — though, of course, only in German.61 My own discussion of Schrettinger’s work62 and that of Michael Buckland63 are to my knowledge the only treatments of Schrettinger’s important work in English. It seems strange that there could be a monographic treatment of Schrettinger in Polish,64 but none in English. Conclusions and Recommendations for Further Research If a review of the literature presented here does nothing else, it should lead to a rejection of the simplistic, teleological explanation of the historical events that ended the dominant role of monastic libraries and led to the modern “order of books” (Chartier) as we know it today. The notion that the end of monastic and other ecclesiastical libraries at the end of the 18th century proceeded evolutionarily, organically, peaceably — perhaps even under the benevolent administration of wise librarians — is still widespread in public opinion and even in some library historian circles.65 My belief is that further study of this crucial era of transition will show that the changes in knowledge infrastructures considered here were a byproduct of convulsive political change, the rise of the nation state, and — as Michel Foucault has insisted — an underlying philosophical revolution most commonly associated with the name of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).66 57 Uwe Jochum, Bibliotheken und Bibliothekare 1800–1900 (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1991). 58 Georg Leyh, „Das Dogma von der systematischen Aufstellung I,“ Zentralblatt für Bibliothekwesen 29.6 (June 1912); ___, „Das Dogma von der systematischen Aufstellung II,“ Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 30.3 (March 1913). 59 Adolf Hilsenbeck, „Martin Schrettinger und die Aufstellung in der Kgl. Hof- und Staatsbibliothek München,” Zentralblatt für Bibliothekswesen 31 (1914). 60 Jeffrey Garrett, “Missing Eco: On Reading The Name of the Rose as Library Criticism,” Library Quarterly 61.4 (1991). 61 Holger Nitzscher, Stefan Seeger, and Sandro Uhlmann, eds., Handbuch der Bibliothek-Wissenschaft: Neudruck der Ausgabe Wien 1834 mit einem Nachwort und einer Bibliographie (Hildesheim: Weidmann, 2003). Therein see specifically Uhlmann’s article on Schrettinger’s lasting legacy, “Martin Schrettinger: Wegbereiter der modernen Bibliothekswissenschaft.” 62 Garrett, “Redefining Order in the German Library, 1775–1825.” 63 Buckland, “Information Schools: A Monk, Library Science, and the Information Age.” 64 Zbigniew Żmigrodski, Martina Schrettingera życie i dzieło (1772–1851) (Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 2004). 65 Here is a particularly extreme rendering of the traditional view of inevitable evolutionary change in libraries, by A.J. Mukherjee: “The conventional modern period of history, beginning from the seventeenth century, saw a significant phase of library development, initiation of new ideas and practices in librarianship and recognition of the role of the librarian in the national planning. Between the Renaissance and the French Revolution, the World made significant progress, which was reflected in the world of libraries too.” A. K. Mukherjee, Librarianship: Its Philosophy and History (London: Asia Publishing House, 1966), 113. 66 Cf. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1994). Contrast Foucault’s characterization of the intellectual transformation that took place in these years with Mukherjee’s: “Not that reason made any progress: it was simply that the mode of being of things, and of the order that divided them up before presenting them to the understanding, was profoundly altered” (p. xxii). It should be noted that Martin Schrettinger, as revealed in his journals of the 1790s when he was a novice at Weißenohe Abbey near Regensburg, was a particularly vociferous advocate of Kantian philosophy, resulting in frequent conflict with his superiors, who in 1798 even insisted that he return Kant’s and other “anstössige” (blasphemous) works to the bookseller — sub peccato gravi. Source: Martin Schrettinger, Tagebuch Wilibald Schrettingers Benediktiners zu Weissenohe I Band. Angefangen vom Jahr 1793, BSB Schrettingeriana 2, fasc. 1, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Handschriftenabteilung, 137–38. Of course, it was Schrettinger rather than those superiors who would prevail in the end, reorganizing the Hof- und Staatsbibliothek according to Kantian principles and, during the 1810s, becoming the principal 69 BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY: KLOSTERSTURM AND SECULARIZATION IN CENTRAL EUROPE theolib.org My further hope is that this review of the literature will lead researchers to find lessons from this earlier revolution in resource ownership that are applicable to today’s equally revolutionary changes. As was the case 200 years ago, no new political economy of information is foreordained by history, but is rather the result of debate and struggle between conflicting interests. The results of this conflict can be either beneficial or repressive, depending on the relative strength and perseverance of those involved. Regardless what implications for the present and future might proceed from this research, more study will surely reveal a host of facts and features making the years between 1770 and 1820 a particularly fascinating period of library history, foundationally important for the establishment of major research libraries at the national, state, and university level all across Europe and, ultimately, the world, and for the establishment of methods of library organization based on an appreciation of patron needs as well as on the power of organizational principles, consistently applied, rather than the assumed powers of librarians’ memory. advisor in library matters to Bavarian statesman and chief minister Maximilian von Montgelas (1759–1838). For more on the relationship between Schrettinger and Montgelas, see Eva Schrepf, “Die Bayerische Hofbibliothek (Staatsbibliothek) 1803– 1843: Versuch einer Skizze ihrer Geschichte,” 113–30. But this, of course, is a whole other story.