Regensburg as Bibliographic Destination for Traveling Scholars of the Eighteenth-Century

Abstract

The Bavarian town of Regensburg was a library travel destination during the European Enlightenment. With at least 26 collections, the number and variety of its private, governmental, school, and religious libraries rivaled that of much larger cities and figured in the bibliographic travel accounts of Johann Keyssler, Christoph Nicolai, Carl Oelrichs, Filippo Argellati, Georg Zapf, Friedrich Hirsching, Adalbert Blumenschein, and many others. The firsthand descriptions of these repositories are unique primary sources for the study of library history. Having been accessible to researchers largely in published forms, many were designed to serve as bibliographic aids for informing scholars about the locations of specialized subject collections and some individual works. The journals, letters, guidebooks, and texts also reflected the evolving scholarly and scientific nature of their cultural period. Overall, this case study of Regensburg’s libraries illustrates the particular value of contemporary travel literature.