Vollbehr (Selected Special Collections: Rare Book and Special ...

Selected Special Collections
Otto Vollbehr Collection
Incunabula.
[Dr. Otto Vollbehr, half-length portrait, facing front, standing next to a rare volume of printers' bookmarks which he donated to the Library of Congress]. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.
The
Vollbehr Collection, stated George Parker Winship of the Harvard Library shortly before its purchase by act of Congress in 1930, "is representative, to an amazing degree, of every sort of publication which came from the fifteenth century presses." The collection contains incunabula produced at 635 different printing establishments and an rich selection of books in vernacular languages. This acquisition quadrupled the number of fifteenth century books held by the Library of Congress and established the Library as the leading center for the study of early printing.
Otto Vollbehr was a German industrialist whose family had made a fortune in the dyestuff industry; he took up book collecting when his physician recommended that he adopt a hobby following a railway accident which left him with a serious nervous condition. In addition to collecting books he acquired “ready-made” collections of 15-18th century book illustrations and of printers’ marks.
The treasure of the Vollbehr Collection is the copy of the Bible produced by Johann Gutenberg at Mainz about 1456-the first book printed with movable type in the western world. The Library's Gutenberg Bible is one of the three surviving perfect copies on vellum. The work had been in the possession of the Benedictine Order for nearly five centuries before it was acquired by Dr. Otto Vollbehr from the Abbey of Saint Paul in eastern Carinthia, Austria. Bound as three volumes, the Bible retains the bookplate of the monastery of Saint Blasius (the owner of the work until the late eighteenth century) as well as its late sixteenth century white pigskin binding. There are 3,114 volumes in the Vollbehr Collection.
Select Digitized Material from the Otto Vollbehr Collection
The first great book printed in Western Europe from movable metal type. The Bible was completed in Mainz, Germany, probably in late 1455. Johann Gutenberg, who lived from about 1397 to 1468, is generally credited with inventing the process of making uniform and interchangeable metal type and developing the materials and methods to make printing possible.