XVIII. századi főúri könyvkultúra maradványai egy elfeledett XXI. századi könyvtárban
18th Century Collections of the Aristocracy in the Arad County Library

Summary/Abstract: The Arad County Library was established in 1913 and today bears the name of the historian A. D. Xenopol. From the point of view of research into the Enlightenment, its 18th century stock of books must be one of the richest contained in any public library set up in historic Greater Hungary. Despite the setbacks suffered by this library in the nearly one hundred years of its existence, (or paradoxically precisely due to these), several 18th century private collections of aristocrats have been preserved in it, which are of primary importance for Hungarian cultural history. The collections are not only there to be discovered almost in their entirety, but with thorough research they reveal their history, their journey from their place of origin up to the time they arrived in the Arad collection. In discovering the life and history of the private collections, several important 18th and 19th century Hungarian collectors step out of the mists of obscurity and continue to enrich the picture of a period in the history of Hungarian libraries, which from many viewpoints was less exposed up to now. I introduce the private collections of aristocrats to be found in Arad at present, following the field of interest, the way of thinking and spirit of their former founders in the context of the European Enlightenment. These libraries did not excel in the collection of books produced in the Hungarian Enlightenment, but the wealth of their stocks specializing in foreign books leads us to infer such a wide sphere of interest and up to date education, that it can most readily be compared with the characteristics of the relationship to books of the European social and culture elite.

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