The history of the former Hessian State Library Fulda as the smallest general scientific library in Hesse goes back much further. In 1776, Prince-Bishop Heinrich von Bibra founded the public library with collections that had largely been collected in the Convention Library, the Court Library, parts of the Jesuit Library, which had been closed in 1773, and the library of the Pontifical Seminary in Fulda after the Thirty Years’ War. The library opened its doors for the first time on May 5, 1778, and in 2018 it can look back on a 240-year history. The initial holdings included private foundations, the rich collection of the parish church in Hammelburg and, after the secularization of 1802/03, other church libraries from the surrounding area with manuscripts and prints. There were hardly any volumes left of the once famous Fulda monastery library when the library was founded. Most of them were lost during the Thirty Years’ War. The library received important gains from 1,560 volumes from Weingarten Abbey on Lake Constance: in 1802, the heir to the Netherlands, Wilhelm V von Nassau-Oranien-Dillenburg, was compensated for the loss of his Dutch rule with the Principality of Fulda, Weingarten and Corvey. Parts of the Weingartner library were transferred to Fulda, including 146 manuscripts from the 10th to 13th centuries. Together with the three Bonifatian codices and a copy of the Gutenberg Bible printed on parchment, they form the highlights of the HLB’s collection.