The Melk Abbey Library (

Deutsch Deutsch or Deutsche may refer to: *''Deutsch'' or ''(das) Deutsche'': the German language, in Germany and other places *''Deutsche'': Germans, as a weak masculine, feminine or plural demonym *Deutsch (word), originally referring to the Germanic ve ...

: Stiftsbibliothek Melk), also known as the Library of

Melk Abbey Melk Abbey (german: Stift Melk) is a Benedictine abbey above the town of Melk, Lower Austria, Austria, on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Danube river, adjoining the Wachau valley. The abbey contains the tomb of Saint Coloman of Stockerau and the ...

, is an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

-based monastic

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

located in

Melk Melk (; older spelling: ) is a city of Austria, in the federal state of Lower Austria, next to the Wachau valley along the Danube. Melk has a population of 5,257 (as of 2012). It is best known as the site of a massive baroque Benedictine monastery ...

. The library has many rare medieval manuscripts, as well as a large inventory of Baroque literature. In July 2019, a researcher discovered fragments of a famous early erotic work - ''

Der Rosendorn ''Der Rosendorn'' () (sometimes ''Der weiße Rosendorn'' ()) is a thirteenth-century German poem. It tells of a virgin who is separated from her vagina, and her dialogue with it forms the structure of the piece. They argue about what it is that m ...

'' or ''The Rose Thorn'' - in the Melk Abbey Library, which allows the poem date back to around 1300, two hundred years earlier than previously thought.

References

{{Authority control Libraries in Austria Monastic libraries