Hieronymus Wilhelm Ebner von Eschenbach

Hieronymus Wilhelm Ebner von Eschenbach (born 22 June 1673, Nuremberg; died 26 January 1752, Engelthal) was a German diplomat, historian, scholar, and founder of the extensive private library Bibliotheca Ebneriana.

Career After completing his studies at the University of Altdorf, Ebner embarked on a four-year educational journey across Europe in 1691, visiting the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Bohemia, and northern Germany. Returning to Nuremberg in 1700, he began preparing for a political career, holding various positions before being appointed to the city council in 1708. Gottfried Christoph Ranner's five-volume catalogue of Bibliotheca Ebneriana, published in the early-19th century, lists 18,512 titles divided into 11 sections, showing the extensive range and eclectic nature of the collection: encyclopedias; books on the history of Nuremberg, of the Holy Roman Empire, and of Europe; books on Christianity, geography, war history, and fine arts; and literature of Greece and Rome in antiquity, to name a few.

Legacy After Ebner's death, , a work on the imperial treasury with engravings by , was published in 1790 under his patronage. The Codex Ebnerianus, a Greek-language illuminated manuscript of the New Testament that is estimated to have been written around 1110, is named after him.