Sprenger

[Peter Gaeffke]

Not so long ago there was an inquiry on the list about the library 
of Aloys  Sprenger. These days I came across a passage in Annemarie 
Schimmel's book  "German Contributions to the Study of Pakistani 
Linguistics" Hamburg 1891. It contains the following information:

During his leave in Germany for heath reasons from his position as
Government interpreter in Persian and Urdu for the British administration,
Sprenger prepared a catalogue of his 1,972 manuscripts and rare books in
1857. He offered his library to the Library of Vienna. However, the
Austrians were not interested. In 1858 the Preussische Staatsbibliothek
bought all his books including 1,140 Arabic manuscripts. 

These manuscripts and books must have been incorporated in the holdings 
of the Berlin library. The manuscripts should be registered in the 
relevant volumes  of Oriental manuscripts in German libraries published by 
the Deutsche Morgenlaendische Gesellschaft.

Peter Gaeffke