Bettina Wagner (Staatsbibliothek Bamberg), Incunabula from Bavaria at Harvard. Co-sponsored by the Committee on Medieval Studies and Houghton Library. Space in the workshops is limited; to register, please click here.

In the nineteenth century, numerous incunabula came onto the antiquarian market as a result of the dissolution of monasteries in Southern Germany. In Bavaria, the holdings of monastic libraries were centralized in Munich, but large quantities of books were sold off as duplicates and dispersed. Harvard College benefitted from many bequests by collectors who had bought at such sales, and thus numerous incunabula with Bavarian provenances are present in the library. Identifying provenances and placing books in their former collection contexts is a challenging task, and we will examine some interesting books and discuss their functions for earlier owners.