Annual maintenance work will take place again this summer, which is why the reading rooms at the Heldenplatz location and in all collections will be closed from Friday, July 25, to Tuesday, August 5, 2025.
Due to the shutdown of the ordering system, no media orders can be accepted from Thursday, July 24, 2025, 4 p.m. to Tuesday, August 5, 2025, 4 p.m. The regular opening hours will then apply again from Wednesday, August 6, 2025.
The study room of the Albertina is closed from July 15 to August 15. During this time (except July 25 to August 5), media ordered from the Albertina collection will be transported twice a week (Monday and Thursday) to the reading rooms of the National Library on Heldenplatz and can be used there.
Starting August 1, 2025, the State Hall will open at 9 a.m.
Due to an event, the State Hall will be closed on August 4, 2025.
The members of the rich German Fugger family of merchants were passionate book collectors. Not only Johann Jakob Fugger and Ulrich Fugger, but also Philipp Eduard Fugger owned important book collections. Hard-pressed for money, the latter’s grandson Albert decided to sell the collection, which comprised as many as 15,000 volumes.
It contained not only a large number of printed books and precious manuscripts, but also music autographs and twenty-seven volumes of the famous "Fugger Newspapers". They actually consisted of handwritten news items compiled by the brothers Octavian Secundus (1549–1600) and Philipp Eduard Fugger (1546–1618) for internal use.
These newspapers contained topical reports from places throughout Europe, as well as from the Americas, North Africa, and Asia. In a FWF-funded research project, these fascinating » sources have been analysed in detail. In 1655, the library’s prefect Matthäus Mauchter (1650–1663) travelled to Augsburg to buy Philipp Eduard Fugger’s library for the imperial library for 15,000 guilders.