20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

130 Liana Păuninhabitants of the citadel were prepared to pay for literacy: they wantedto read more and more books from various fields and they were ready topay for it; for the person dealing with such a business, a library was anopportunity to make the investments in a printing house and a bookshopprofitable. In his work “The Monograph of the Royal Free Town Timisoara”(1853), Johann N. Preyer, mayor of the town between 1844 and 1858,considered Timisoara as “the last bastion of the today’s civilization towardsthe East, at some hour distance from the Ottoman Empire… the last culturecarrier emanating from the European civilization”. With reference to thespiritual and social life of the town, Preyer says: “We should not forget thelibrary”. This is the library established by Joseph Klapka, the first libraryand reading hall in the Austrian Empire that counted nearly 4,000 volumes.This was a successful enterprise not only for the town’s inhabitants but alsothe villagers around and the catalogue containing the titles of the books thatexisted in the library allowed us nowadays to have a better and clearer ideaabout the cultural aspirations of those people at the beginning of the 19 thcentury..Joseph Klapka – A Prominent Figure of the TownWho was Joseph Klapka? His family originated from Bohemia and theoldest representative of the family settled in Timisoara, Karl Josef NorbertKlapka, was the owner of several drug stores. As a senator by right of thetown, he was mainly responsible for the cultural issues and consequently,gave his substantial support to the town theatre. One of his sons, Joseph,was to become a prominent personality of the town. Most probably born inArad, he settled in Timisoara in the year 1807 and married the heiress of thefirst printing house in town. It had been opened in 1717 by Joseph Heimerl,on the grounds of a royal “privilege” – a concession obtained from theViennese chancellery – and its primary aim had been to draw up documentsfor the authority offices; later on, it received the approval to print a calendarand a weekly publication. Following the liberalization of the editing normsof books and magazines under the reign of Josef the II nd , so many printingsappeared that the town high office was forced to introduce the “preliminarycensoring” and in 1793, by order of the authorities, all printing houseswhich did not have that “privilege’ were closed. Only one printing houseremained, the one established by Heimerl which, after changing severalowners, was inherited by Therezia David who was to become the wifeof Joseph Klapka, recently established in town. In 1817 it was the tenthprinting house in the Austrian monarchy as to its importance and oneof the best equipped; moreover, the printings quality was guaranteed.