New blog post of the Gotha Research Library: Early Central European Orientalists in Search of Texts for Studies. Insights from Johann Ernst Gerhard’s Collection

The invention of printing with movable type in the mid fifteenth century in Mainz led to an unprecedented dissemination of books in the Germanic and Romance language areas of Europe in the following decades. In contrast, a parallel development in the Near East is first recognizable in the eighteenth century due to an amalgamation of lingual, religious, cultural, and social factors. Although the necessary technical knowledge existed, a market for printed books was initially missing in the Levant. The increasing interest of sixteenth and seventeenth-century scholars in oriental language raises the question of how early orientalists gained access to writings for their philological studies.

The Bibliotheca Gerhardina, one of the most significant scholarly libraries in early modern Germany, affords revealing insights into this question.