Mainz City Library

The Scientific City Library Mainz is a municipal scientific library in Germany. It has a collection of around 700,000 media units. Its origins date back to the year 1477.

The Scientific City Library goes back to the Bibliotheca Universitatis Moguntinae of the Kurfürstliche Universität, founded in 1477, which was dissolved by the French government during the Revolutionary Wars in 1798. The city library and the Martinus Library are the two oldest libraries in Mainz; their historical collections complement each other and partly originate from identical provenances. The majority of its older books are attributed to the libraries of the Mainz Jesuit branch, which was dissolved in 1773, as well as from the three richest monasteries in the city, the Charterhouse, the Reichklara Monastery, and the Altmünster, which were abolished in 1781. The manuscript and printed collections from the libraries of the mendicant orders – such as the Augustinian Hermits, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Capuchins – that were dissolved during the secularization are also reflected in the historical fund. Due to these sources, the clear thematic focus of the older holdings is on the subjects of theology, philosophy, history, law, and philology. Noteworthy are the extensive donations with great thematic diversity from individuals, clergymen, members of the University of Mainz, and citizens from the city and surrounding area, which reached the library directly or via the dissolved monasteries. The increase in holdings in the 19th and early 20th centuries was significantly influenced by donations and legacies from private book owners from the city of Mainz and its areas along the Rhine, such as the Rheingau, Rheinhessen, and the Palatinate. Among the many donors in the late 19th century, the Mainz medical council Dr. Carl Wenzel and his son, the Indologist Dr. Heinrich Wenzel, are noteworthy. Exemplary for outstanding private libraries, the majority of which found their way into the rare collection, is the library of the Mainz canon and language teacher Johannes Petrus Schick in the surroundings of the electoral court of Johann Philipp von Schönborn, Johann Christian von Boyneburg, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

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