Old Prints
tel. (+ 48) 91 48 19 177
e-mail: staredruki@ksiaznica.szczecin.pl
Monday – Friday 9.00 - 19.00
Tuesday 9.00 – 15.00
Old prints are available only for scientific and publishing purposes. The Pomeranian Library has over 30 thousand old prints dating back to the 15th – 18th century. Book collection includes material in all fields of knowledge of the time, including philosophy, medicine, geography, general history and history of literature. We have a wide range of literature on law, Protestant and Catholic theology. A collection of ancient literature in translations and reworks is of sizeable volume.
Incunabula, numbering 48 titles (38 volumes), are one of the most precious collections in our Library. A majority of them are of the Pomeranian provenance. They come from the capitular library of the cathedral in Kamień Pomorski and St Mary's Church in Stargard Szczeciński. From an artistic point of view, the most beautiful incunabulum is the work of St Bonawentura Opuscula (Strasburg 1489), ornamented with a coloured wood engraving featuring the author’s image. The work Sermones of Mikołaj of Błonie is the only Polish material (Strasburg 1495).
A collection of Polish materials contains over 2 200 volumes. It includes both prints published in the area of the State of Poland and Polish materials published abroad. The most interesting are: the second edition of Nicolaus Copernicus’s work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (Bazylea 1566), astronomy works of Johannes Hevelius, Selenographia and Machina coelestis (Gdańsk 1673, 1679). Also Arian prints, among them Catechismus (Raków 1612) are worthy of a special notice.
A collection of Pomerania-related materials numbers over 4 thousand volumes. It integrates works published in the area within the historical borders of West Pomerania, and those related to Pomerania. The most valuable of them come from a ducal library in Szczecin and the capitular library in Kamień Pomorski (Missale Caminense, Nuremberg 1506). The most numerous group of Pomerania-related matrerials comprises decrees issued by the Pomeranian Duchy authorities, occasional literature, dissertations of professors and students of Szczecin College. Historiographic literature created in the 17th and the 18th centuries has to this day served as a fundamental source of knowledge for research on the past of Pomerania. Especially worth mentioning are Genealogy... Pomeraniae Ducum by Andreas Hildebrandt, Szczecin 1622, Das Grosse Pommrische Kirchen Chronicon by Daniel Cramer (Szczecin 1628), Sechs Bücher vom Alten Pommerlande by Johann Micraelius (Szczecin-Lipsk 1723) and Topographia Electoratus Brandenburgici et Ducatus Pomeraniae, (Frankfurt a. M. 1652) by Martin Zeiller, including numerous figures of the Pomeranian towns.
In 1998-2002 the Pomeranian Library participated in an international project titled “Improving conditions of accessibility and preservation of collections from Polish-German cultural borderline in the collections of Polish libraries. Common European heritage”. Within this undertaking over 5 thousand prints published in the area of Pomerania, Silesia and Prussia, have been prepared and microfilmed. A database of these prints is available on the web site of the National Library.