01/22/2024 | Pressemitteilung

Immenhausen Gutenberg Bible accessible online

The so-called 'Immenhausen Gutenberg Bible' (owned by the parish of Immenhausen), which is being kept in the Kassel University Library since 1978, is now digitally accessible for the first time sixty-five years after its discovery.

When, in November 1958, a group of confirmation students found some old books while clearing out the old attic in the vicarage in Immenhausen, nobody could have guessed that it was a sensational find: they had discovered a volume of the Gutenberg Bible. And indeed, it was to take over fifteen years before researchers believed the Immenhausen school headmaster Friedrich-Karl Baas, who soon identified the book in question as a copy of the 42-line Gutenberg Bible. It was not until 1975 that the 'Immenhausen Gutenberg Bible' was presented to the public and officially entered as number 48 in the catalogue of surviving copies worldwide.

Together with the most precious manuscripts of the Kassel University Library, such as the Hildebrandlied and the 'Kasseler Willehalm', the Immenhausen Bible was then part of a permanent exhibition in the specially built exhibition vault of the Murhardsche Bibliothek on Brüder-Grimm-Platz from 1978 to 2013.

In autumn 2023, at the request of the Immenhausen parish, parishioners were once again given the opportunity to view 'their' Gutenberg Bible as part of a special presentation in the rooms of the Murhard Library. This was also a good opportunity for the library to digitise the Immenhausen copy, which had previously only been sparsely documented photographically, for the first time in its entirety and in the best image quality using state-of-the-art technology and to make it available to the general public electronically via the ORKA repository [https://orka.bibliothek.uni-kassel.de/viewer/image/1701858288309/] of the UB/LMB Kassel.