Eighteenth-Century Monastic Libraries in Southern Germany and Austria: Architecture and Decorations (review)

Eighteenth-Century Monastic Libraries in Southern Germany and Austria: Architecture and Decorations. By Eric Garberson. Baden-Baden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, 1998. xi, 264 pp. DM 240.00. ISBN 3-87320-437-1.

Eric Garberson's interdisciplinary study is a substantial revision of his doctoral dissertation (Johns Hopkins, 1990). The 226 numbered pages of this small volume consist of 116 pages of actual text, supported by notes, a bibliography, a catalog of libraries, copies of archival documents, and an index. In addition there is an unnumbered section of schematic plans and thirty-four black-and-white photographs of library interiors and ceiling frescoes. The study complements the two-volume folio edition of Die Bibliotheksräume der deutschen Klöster in der Zeit des Barock by Edgar Lehmann (Berlin: Deutscher Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1996). These two works are the only studies in book form that deal with this genre of libraries unique during this period.

A short introduction will provide some background for the study discussed here. Most of the perhaps three hundred artistic library interiors in princely residences and large monasteries that were characteristic of the Baroque period do not exist any longer. They have deteriorated because of neglect or were destroyed during wars and political unrest. Their sizable book collections were lost or scattered. Only a hundred of these libraries are still extant and admired by modern visitors as monuments of art whose paintings and sculptures reflect the contemporary mind. They were located primarily in Catholic German-speaking territories, and many were part of the larger landowning abbeys of the old religious orders. Among the outstanding extant monastery libraries are the two libraries of the Premonstratensians at the Strahow monastery in Prague (formerly under Habsburg jurisdiction) and the Benedictine libraries in St. Gall (Switzerland), Admont (Austria), and Wiblingen (Germany). The former Court Library in Vienna (1723-26), now the National Library of Austria, and the older library at the Escorial in Spain (1587) are stunning Baroque monuments of secular courtly grandeur. Few American librarians or architects are aware of this unique type of libraries, which are high points in the architectural history of their professions. The public areas of the nineteenth- century Library of Congress's Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C., display many Baroque features that can be interpreted as a modern American version of this genre. They give visitors an idea of the splendor of these libraries.

Baroque libraries are unique because of their architectural composition and embellishments. They are hybrid monuments that consist of a book/manuscript collection as well as an ornate hall to house it. As visual statements of self- promotion, they were, like other representative buildings, designed to show their sponsors' importance, wealth, power, and social rank. The artistic grandeur of their interiors provided a majestic artistic setting for their book collections; as a unit they were an assertion of the owners' sophistication and love of learning. These were libraries to be seen and admired as Schaubibliotheken, whose artistic splendor was similar to that of the festive halls for grand receptions, rather than being stern rooms for study only. While the decorations in secular establishments glorify their builders' accomplishments, embellishments in monastery libraries usually praise knowledge and the respective orders' contributions to its growth.

Baroque art experienced a late blossoming during the early eighteenth century in the Catholic German-speaking territories. The considerable wealth of the secular and clerical powers resulted in a building spree of beautiful palaces and churches as well as of splendid libraries in the monasteries of the old landowning religious orders. The purpose of these libraries and the similarity of their iconography allow them to be clustered and examined as a distinct group. Garberson's study presents in an introductory and four well-researched chapters an excellent background for the appreciation of this genre of libraries. Contemporary documents are used when available as a basis for discussion. A letter from...