Stolberg Collection
In 1931 Harvard University acquired a part of the private library of the Princes of Stolberg-Wernigerode. Located in what is today western Saxony-Anhalt, this German principality dates from the 12th century, maintaining its independence within the Holy Roman Empire until the ascendancy of Napoleon and Prussia. Because of inflation and the financial hardships of the Weimar period, the princes were forced to sell their library of 125,000 volumes in 1930. Harvard acquired section K, the portion comprising the political and legal sciences, and the Law School received the bulk of this purchase, some 12,500 volumes in total.
The golden age of the Stolberg library was during the reign of Christian Ernst (b. 1710-1771). He not only greatly increased its holdings and opened it to the public, but was also its librarian, commissioning the distinctive Stolberg bookplate and personally inscribing the publication date on the spine of each volume bound in white vellum. In 1746 Christian Ernst issued an edict making the collection --by then about 10,000 volumes-- a public library.
The bulk of the Stolberg Collection is not cataloged in HOLLIS. Access to the collection can be made through a typescript catalog prepared by Martin Breslauer, the book dealer who sold the library to Harvard. Limited subject access to the collection can be obtained through the Stolberg copy of Lipenius's Bibliotheca juridica, annotated by Christian Ernst himself.
In 1744 the author Friedrich Wideburg donated to the Stolberg library a copy of his recently published work, De libertate electorum S.R.I. in eligendis regibus Romanorum commentarius. The Stolberg copy preserves the gracious Latin correspondence between the author and Christian Ernst, who remarks that his favorite works are those by authors who shed greater light on the public law of Germany.
A fine example of the Stolberg books is Johann Gottfried von Meiren's Nürnbergliche Friedens-Executions Handlungen und Geschichte. Published in 1736, the work chronicles the proceedings of the recess held at Nuremberg in 1649 which negotiated the execution of the Peace of Westphalia. The Peace itself, signed at Münster and Osnabrück in 1648, brought an end to the Thirty Years' War and became the fundamental diplomatic document of modern Europe.