With its remarkable cupola frescoes, the late Baroque library hall commissioned by Abbot Matthäus Offner (term of office: 1751 – 1779) was finally completed in 1776. Originally designed in 1764, it was constructed in the following years by the Austrian master builder Josef Hueber (1715 – 1787). Hueber was an adherent of the ideals of the Enlightenment: “Like our understanding, spaces too should be filled with light.” The massive room with its three chambers is the largest monastery library hall in the world.
The seven ceiling frescoes are also suffused with the spirit of the Enlightenment and were painted by the then 80-year-old Bartolomeo Altomonte (1694 – 1783) in the summer months of the years 1775 and 1776. They show the various phases of human understanding; beginning with thought and speech, through the sciences and arts, and finally culminating in Divine Revelation in the central cupola. In the cases below this cupola are stored various editions of the Bible and the works of the Church Fathers, in the side room to the north is theological literature while the books on other subjects are to be found in the southern side room.