Incunabula and block books
With support from the State Digitization Program, the University Library began digitizing incunabula from its collections in 2022. The project is ongoing.
The University Library’s collection of incunabula and block books is one of its most valuable holdings. Incunabula are all Western prints with a publication date before January 1, 1501. The University Library’s incunabula collection with around 3,800 titles is the fourth-largest of its kind in Germany. Around 680 titles come from the Municipal Library’s holdings. 200 incunabula have been missing since their evacuation during World War II. The majority of the holdings come from the cloister libraries of Albertine Saxony and from various book collections of the University. One of the greatest treasures of the collection is a parchment copy of the 42-line Bible (“Gutenberg Bible”).