Castle Library Hrádek u Nechanic

The present work focuses on the library in the state castle Hrádek u Nechanic, which was owned by the noble family of Harrach since its foundation until 1945. The introductory chapters describe the history of the Harrach family, with particular emphasis on the owners of the library, the history of the building and the book collection itself. Subsequently, the fund is characterized according to its chronological and language structure. The main body of the thesis deals with a thematic analysis and a provenance survey of Hrádek's library. This includes a description of the different types of bookplates and signatures of the owners of individual books, with a special focus on Jan Nepomuk of Harrach, who signed the largest number of books in Hrádek. Printed and handwritten dedications present in the fund are characterized as well. In conclusion all further notes in Hrádek's volumes of significance to the history of the individual books are described. In this work it is shown that the majority of the fund does not consist of books written in Czech, as it was claimed in some of older works dealing with this library, it is predominated by books written in German. Thematically, mainly fiction can be found in the library. There also are a number of periodicals and, in addition to printed books, several..