Mobile Book Cabinet

No doubt, a large library is a great treasure and in the best of all worlds a good fortune. But at a certain point, the owners of so many books may have the feeling that they will never have an overview of their collections. From the standpoint of sheer weight, let alone content that weight can be daunting. The question arises of what books might be so indispensable in the tiniest of quarters, like the cell of a monk? Those are the books which belong in this portable bookcase, with its clear lines and material. It’s not the format for storing unlimited amounts of books, and for every book that is added, one has to be removed. But for that one has the most important books in one, portable place, at all times. And it’s good now and then to have a library that has not become a piece of real estate.

According to an old Latin verse, the Cistercians preferred valleys, the Benedictines mountains, the Franciscans small towns, and the Jesuits large towns for their monasteries: “Bernhardus valles, montes Benedictus amabat, / oppida Franciscus, magnas Ignatius urbes”. The Benedictines of the Königsmünster Abbey have certainly kept to this, for their monastery towers high above Meschede, town in the mountainous Sauerland region. From a bird’s eye view, you’ll easily spot that the monastery’s buildings build up a small town on their own: in the foreground the grammar school and some of the monastery buildings, flanked by the House of Silence and the “Oasis”, further back the workshops with a smithy and carpentry plus the agricultural buildings – all this embedded in a park-like garden.