Making University Fields for Chymistry: A Case Study of Helmstedt University

Current collections of the Herzog August Bibliothek (HAB) situated in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, contain nearly two thousand chymical books. Most of them were acquired immediately after publication, during a period extending from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The acquisition of these manuscripts and printed books by the former Wolfenbüttel court was closely connected to a university: the Wolfenbüttel Library and the erstwhile University of Helmstedt belonged to the same court of Braunschweig-Lüneburg. Both institutions exchanged book holdings several times. As a result, most of the books, as well as the administration files of the university, are today located in Wolfenbüttel. Those materials provide scholars with an opportunity to study the academic demarcations between Aristotelian natural philosophy and chymistry; and to examine the relationship between court chymistry and the university. This article offers some reflections on what chymistry was like at a "normal" early modern university by delineating chymistry's position within the University of Helmstedt over the period of its existence, from 1576 to 1810.