Beschreibung:

ALTENBURG, Gymnasium Fridericanum -- Christian Friedrich WILISCH (1684-1759). Index bibliothecae quae...in usum ill. Gymnasii Fridericiani Altenburgi augescit . Altenburg: J.L. Richter, 1721. -- Appendix ad bibliothecae . Altenburg: Richter, 1722 Two works in one volume, small 8 o (162 x 96 mm). Interleaved. Each with engraved folding frontispiece by Moritz Bodenehr Contemporary calf (some wear and soiling). THE AUTHOR'S OWN COPY, with his signed additional instructions on the two pages of the front endleaves, and added shelfmarks of the books in red ink in the margins; he and subsequent hands have added in the interleavings with further additions up to 1760. The Latin School in Altenburg, seat of the protestant Dukes of Saxony-Altenberg, was established in 1530 in the dissolved Franciscan monastery with its rich library which over the next two centuries was vastly increased, consisting, by the 1720s, of many thousand volumes. Paul Raabe, in his essay on library catalogues as sources for the history of the book (in "Bücherkataloge aus buchgeschichliche Quellen," Wolfenbütteler Schriften zur Geschichte des Buchwesens , 10, 1984), has stressed the important role which school libraries played in Germany during the eighteenth century. This catalogue of the Altenburg Friederichs-Gymnasium is the earliest, and no doubt the largest, of the three catalogues of school libraries published during this period (the others being Göttingen, 1729, and Neustadt, 1787).