Agreement with the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

Following more than a year of negotiations, the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences (FLÚ) and the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB) have signed a landmark collaboration agreement for the digitisation of Bernard Bolzano’s written estate preserved at the latter.

As a result, the approximately 11,500 pages that make up such a written estate will be made available on the Bolzano Digital Archive and the ÖNB’s website under the Public Domain Mark 1.0 (PDM).

Moreover, this agreement will bring back together—albeit in digital form—the two main collections of Bolzano’s manuscripts, which ended up in the hands of various acquaintances following his death in 1848:

the collection consisting largely of the manuscripts that Michael Josef Fesl gathered whilst in Vienna and which, in accordance with his wishes, were handed over to the Museum of the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague (nowadays the National Museum of the Czech Republic) in 1864;
the collection comprising the mathematical manuscripts entrusted to Robert Zimmermann, who donated them to the Imperial Court Library in Vienna (nowadays the Austrian National Library) in 1892.

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to all those who have made it possible to bring this landmark agreement to fruition, namely Petr Kitzler (Director of the FLÚ), Eva Zažímalová (former President of the Czech Academy of Sciences), Ondřej Beránek (Vice-President of the Czech Academy of Sciences), Michaela Mayr (current Director General of the ÖNB), Johanna Rachinger (former Director General of the ÖNB), Katharina Kaska (Director of the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the ÖNB) and Marlies Dornig (Director of the Department of Picture Archives and Graphics at the ÖNB), as well as the lawyers and other personnel from both institutions.

PragMatika is funded by the Czech Science Foundation through the Junior Star grant GA ČR 23-06540M, and this agreement is also the result of the Foundation’s unwavering support.

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