Incunabula and Old Prints

Incunabula collection

Encompassing around 1600 titles, the ULB can call a considerable incunabula collection its own. These valuable 15th century prints found their way to the library in various possibilities: from private bequests to targeted acquisitions by the state of Prussia or as a result of secularisation during the Napoleonic era and later in the course of the land reform after the Second World War.

Research Incunabula Collection

Digitised Incunabula

All of the already digitised incunabula are researchable via Ha:Lit and OPAC.

Cradle book

All incunabla available in the ULB up to 2009 are listed in the Incunabula Census of the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt, which was compiled by Marie-Christine Henning. Please note, that some of the items listed there are no longer part of the collection for various reasons.

Questions

For questions, please contact historische-sammlungen@bibliothek.uni-halle.de.

Old prints

The ULB is one of Germany’s leading libraries of old volumes, with a large stock of historical prints from the 16th to the 19th century. Special emphasis is placed on prints from the Reformation and books from the period of Enlightenment. Of the approx. 28,000 16th century prints, 1,736 alone are solely part of the holdings of the ULB. The ULB additionally owns approx. 80,000 titles from the 17th century and approx. 175,000 titles from the 18th century. Numerous old prints of the ULB have already been digitised as part of several DFG projects.

Research Old Prints

Catalogues

All titles published between the 16th and19th century are researchable via Ha:Lit and OPAC.

Index of German-Printed Books (VD)

Titles of the collection are also listed in the indexes of 16th century (VD 16), 17th century (VD 17) and 18th century (VD 18) printed works, which were published in German-speaking regions.