Collection Description

This site provides high-resolution full-color facsimiles of 288 books printed between 1500 and 1600, reproduced from the Schulze-Greenleaf Library of Northwestern University. They were acquired by Northwestern in 1870 as part of a much larger collection, purchased from the estate of Ministerialrat Johannes Schulze (1786–1869), a senior official in the Prussian culture ministry and one of the most ardent proponents and principal implementers of the Humboldt and Stein-Hardenberg reforms which transformed German higher education.

According to library historian Georg Leyh, Schulze’s collection of over 20,000 volumes was one of the great private libraries of 19th-century Germany. Upon its arrival in Evanston, it was called the “Greenleaf Library,” after Luther Greenleaf, the Northwestern trustee who made the acquisition possible through a generous gift of real estate to the university. For more information, see "A Tale of Two Cities: A Brief History of Northwestern's Greenleaf Library."

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Northwestern’s catalog NUcat contains linked records for each title in this digitized collection.