This collection consists of approx. 20,000 historic flyers, pamphlets and official notices such as ownership patents, circulars and decrees from the early 16th to the end of the 19th century. The majority of the printings are from the countries ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Among the non-Austrian holdings, the main focus is on pamphlets from many European and a few non-European countries, and printings from Germany.
The largest holding in the Pamphlets collection is of pamphlets about the 1848 revolution in the Habsburg Monarchy (Vienna, the Crown lands, Hungary and Lombardy-Venetia). The holding comprises more than 10,000 items and comes from three main sources:
The deposit copies - although these were not received in very large numbers during this turbulent time – include the donation at the end of the 19th century of the political library of the imperial-royal Presidium of the Council of Ministers, which had itself taken over the library of the highest imperial-royal police authority. The collection grew again in 1910 when it took over a collection about the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia from the estate of the Austrian historian Joseph Alexander Freiherr von Helfert (1820-1910). This collection covers the period of Austrian rule in this area (Lombardy until 1860, Venice until 1866); there are particularly extensive holdings relating to events during the 1848 revolution in Italy (1445 out of a total of 2149 documents). In 2016 this collection was included in the national » Memory of Austria list of Austrian heritage documents forming part of the Memory of the World documentary heritage programme.
Bibliographic indexing of the pamphlets has not yet been completed. You can search for the holdings that have already been catalogued using search terms such as flyer, pamphlet or single-sheet print in the main library Catalogue QuickSearch.