Building history

The generously laid-out plan for a complete late Baroque renovation of the Monastery building designed around 1735 by the Master Builder Gotthard Hayberger from Steyr foresaw a representative library hall in the North part. Two-stories high and spread over the whole length and width of the section, this room was indeed built (admittedly in a no longer contemporary formal language) but the construction on a previously free area had such grievous structural shortcomings that it had to be torn down and rebuilt.

Since the constructional problems could still not be solved, the City and Court Master Builder Josef Hueber from Graz, who had taken over Hayberger‘s position in Admont in 1764, first thought of merely overhauling the North wing. In the course of a major rethinking of the whole conception, however, he soon turned to placing the library, whose architecture had been totally replanned, in the Southern wing of the East section. This long building, however, was to take the place of the then still extant early Baroque building from the time around 1630 which housed (also in its Southern part) the old, 111 foot long bookroom and now had to be torn down.

The shell of the new East section was already partly completed by 1770 and certainly wholly by 1773 since in the course of the latter year the inner construction was begun, with the participation of the Graz sculptor Veit Königer. In the jubilee year 1774 (Admont Monastery could even then look back on 700 years of existence) a contract was signed with the painter Bartolomeo Altomonte, who created the cycle of frescoes in the seven roof vaults in the summer months of the next two years, assisted by Georg Dallicher.

The further construction of the interior then followed: the marble floor (whose stone flags had been acquired in 1772) was laid, the the bookcases with the gallery running around the side rooms were set up and the sculptures created by the Monastery sculptor Josef Stammel (who had died in 1765) were put in place. In 1777 the librarian P. Mathias Fritsche was able to arrange his roughly 35,000 books on the shelves, which had room for twice as many, and complete the first part of his catalogue.