Könyv és főnemesi műveltség: Festetics György magánkönyvtára katonai pályára lépésének kezdetén
Books and Aristocratic Erudition: The Private Library of Count György Festetics before his Joining the Imperial-Royal Army

Summary/Abstract: This paper intends to throw some light on the intellectual background to the Hungarian Enlightenment through the analysis of the library of a young Hungarian aristocrat, Count György Festetics (1755–1819). Festetics became a crucial figure in Hungary’s intellectual revival when he founded the first Hungarian agricultural college and went on financing the publication of Hungarian newspapers as well as supporting new Hungarian literary attempts. Although trained at the Collegium Theresianum, founded by Queen Maria Theresa, in Vienna, Festetics decided to change careers by leaving his post at the Royal Croatian Council in Zagreb to join the Imperial-Royal Army in 1778. For this reason, he commissioned one of his secretaries to compile a catalogue of his private library. The works listed in this catalogue show the influence of his education in Vienna preparing him for the services of the Habsburg Empire and court life. His former teachers, Carl Anton Martini and Joseph Sonnenfels, or the Jesuit mathematician Pál Makó were the authors of some of the legal, economic and scientific textbooks. However, his library also included a large number of books by the authors of natural law, such as Pufendorf, Thomasius, Wolf etc. The works written by the most prominent figures of the French and Scottish Enlightenment, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Home, Hume and Smith were also well known to Festetics, just like the philosophical works of John Locke.

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