Exhibit of the Month - April 2022

April 6 - May 3, 2022 Ante-room to the General reading Room (gate A), open Monday to Saturday 9 am - 7 pm (see opening hours of the NL)
Admission 10 CZK (free for the NL readers)

Oekonomische Encyklopädie
NL Prague 17 H 763/T. 1 a NL Prague 17 H 2/T. 1

The encyclopedia by Johann Georg Krünitz was published in Berlin between 1773 and 1858 in the publishing house of Joachim Pauli. It consists of 242 richly illustrated volumes with alphabetically ordered subject entries. It is the largest German-language general encyclopedia comprising the latest pieces of knowledge across disciplines. Thematically it covers both natural and technical sciences, humanities, a great attention is paid to economy, industries and their modernization, or agriculture; included are also medicine, zoology, botany or geography as well as culture or everyday and social life. An integral part of the encyclopedia is a great number of copperplate engravings that clearly illustate the given topic and their processing is excellent. Thanks to its wide range of topics and accompanying illustrations the Krünitz encyclopedia became a basic encyclopedic work that couldn´t be missing in any systematically built library.

The popularity of the encyclopedia is also evidenced by its pirated edition (an unauthorized reprint published without the permission from authors or the original publisher), published by the printing house of Josef Georg Trassler in Brno between 1787 and 1823. In his edition J. G. Trassler took over the original format, the range, typography, the arrangement of individual entries and the accompanying illustrations as well. The encyclopedia printed by Trassler was cheaper so it was an unpleasant competition for Pauli. In the end, Krünitz encyclopedia published by J. G. Trassler in Brno was not completed, only 129 volumes were published – the last included entry was the word Saat (Winter).