International Library Scholarship for Literary Research at the Gotha Research Library

Libraries not only preserve literature - libraries can also inspire literature

On the joint initiative of the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Thuringia, the Friends of the Gotha Research Library e.V. and the Literarische Gesellschaft Thüringen e.V. , writers have had the opportunity to conduct research at the Gotha Research Library with a scholarship since 2021. The research grant is aimed at authors of all literary genres (novel, poetry, drama, etc.) who wish to engage with the holdings of the Gotha Research Library during the research phase of their literary projects.

The Gotha Research Library is one of the most important historical libraries in the German-speaking world. It is part of the collections of the Ducal House of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, which existed from 1640 to 1825, and the holdings of the Ducal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which were collected in Gotha between 1826 and 1945, both of which are housed in Friedenstein Castle. 

The core of its holdings is the outstanding collection of manuscripts, autographs, and estates relating to the cultural history of Protestantism in the early modern period. The collection of approximately 3,500 Oriental manuscripts is one of the largest of its kind in Germany.

The Perthes Collection comprises unique source material on the development of cartography and geography in the 19th and 20th centuries. The library also holds an important collection of letters written by German emigrants to America in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The rich holdings of travel literature, the estate of science fiction author Kurd Laßwitz, and the area of the Illuminati Order, which has been intensively researched in Gotha, are also suitable for literary discoveries, as are the educational history and natural history sources, which range from astronomy and alchemy to botany.