The Altdorf University Library was the library of Altdorf University, located in the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg. The university was also known as Altorfina or Academia Norica. Founded as a grammar school in 1575, the university became an academy in 1578 and was elevated to a full university in 1623. The university’s heyday was in the 17th century, lasting until the first quarter of the 18th century. Afterwards, it gradually declined. After Nuremberg was taken over in 1806, the Imperial City University of Altdorf fell to the Kingdom of Bavaria. The now insignificant Altdorfina was dissolved by King Maximilian I Joseph on September 24, 1809, and handed over to the University of Erlangen in 1818.
The takeover of the Altdorf University Library nearly doubled Erlangen’s holdings. The Friderico-Alexandrina received around 47,000 books, incunabula, and manuscripts that had come to Altdorf from various libraries over the centuries. These included several scholars’ libraries, such as those of pharmacist Johann Leonhard Stöberlein and Orientalist Johann Christoph Wagenseil. Most notable was the extremely valuable library of Nuremberg city physician and natural scientist Christoph Jacob Trew. He had bequeathed it to the Altorfina in 1769. Comprising some 34,000 volumes, plus 20,000 scholarly letters from the 14th to 18th centuries, 12,000 dissertations, and a significant collection of botanical and zoological drawings, Trew’s library was one of the most important natural science scholarly libraries of the 18th century.
With the exception of the natural science section of the Trew Library, which is arranged according to its own classification system, and the Wagenseil Library, the books, manuscripts, and incunabula from Altdorf were incorporated into the general collection.