Following the Traces of Books in the Brisigell Family
The Brisigells were one of the families that settled in Bohemia in connection with land acquisitions during the Thirty Years’ War. The family achieved its greatest wealth in the second generation at the turn of the 18th century. The third generation suffered a gradual decline, caused i.a. by financial difficulties and debt. After the middle of the 18th century, the family disappeared from Bohemia. The electronic cataloguing of early printed books with systematically recorded provenances has made it possible to identify in the collections of the Strahov Library and the National Library a small set of books previously owned by individual family members. Not only has the analysis enabled insight into the reading interests of the Brisigell family, but it has also provided information on the wandering of the books within the family as well as within friendly and business relations with other noblemen in the regions of West and Southwest Bohemia.