Conferences & Workshops

Being Social, Doing Knowledge, Connecting Far and Wide. International Fellows' Meeting of the Gotha Scholarship Programmes

The Gotha Research Centre is celebrating the Gotha fellowship programmes, in particular the Herzog-Ernst Fellowship Programme, which has now been in existence for more than 20 years and has already enabled more than 430 researchers to study manuscripts, books and obejects in the Gotha Research Library and the Ducal Collections. The conference offers former students the opportunity to present their current research and to network. The occasion is also the farewell of Professor Dr Martin Mulsow, who has helped to shape and permanently influence the scholarship programmes at the Gotha Research Campus as Director of the FZG since 2008.

Please register at forschungszentrum.gotha@uni-erfurt.de.

Programme/Programm

Thursday/Donnerstag, 18. Juni 2026

  • 10.00 Welcome with Coffee & Tea at the Gotha Research Centre // Ankommen mit Kaffee und Tee im Forschungszentrum Gotha
  • 10.30 Opening and Greetings/Eröffnung und Begrüßung
    • Markus Meumann (Forschungszentrum Gotha)
    • Kathrin Paasch (Forschungsbibliothek Gotha)
    • Iris Schröder (Forschungskolleg Transkulturelle Studien/Sammlung Perthes)
  • Word of Welcome/Grußwort 
    • Christian Gerlitz (Ernst-Abbe-Stiftung)
  • 10.45–12.30 Being Social: Protagonists and Networks of Knowledge (I) // Being Social: Akteure und Netzwerke des Wissens (I)
    • Chair/Moderation: ASAPH BEN-TOV
    • AYMAN ATAT: Being Social, Doing Knowledge: Ibn Sallūm al-Ḥalabī at the Seventeenth-
      Century Ottoman Court
    • MARIE RYANTOVÁ: Zwischen Wittenberg, Schweden und dem Baltikum: Der tschechische Exulant Georg Holyk und sein Stammbuch als Zeugnis der Reisen und der Entstehung eines Netzwerks von Kontakten
    • PABLO TORIBIO: Traveling from Nürnberg to Rome and Cambridge, Being Social with  Rabbis, Female Scholars and Christian Heretics: the album amicorum of  Johann Wülfer (1651–1724)
  • 12.30–14.00  Lunch Break/Mittagspause
  • 14.00–15.15 Being Social: Protagonists and Networks of Knowledge (II) // Being Social: Akteure und Netzwerke des Wissens (II)
    • Chair/Moderation: HIRAM KÜMPER
    • MARTINA KASTNEROVÁ: A Young Traveller for Knowledge: The Continental Network of Philip Sidney (1554–1586)
    • IVETA LEITANE: Die Wissenspraktiken der Juden Lettlands zwischen deutscher Tischgesellschaft und den russischen obedy in der Zwischenkriegszeit
  • 16:00  Farewell Ceremony for Martin Mulsow // Feierliche Verabschiedung von Martin Mulsow (with registration/mit Anmeldung)
    • Festvortrag von Prof Dr. Liliane Weissberg (University of Pennsylvania): Objekte der Aufklärung

Friday/Freitag, 19. Juni 2026

  • 9.00–10.45 Doing Knowledge: Media and Systems of Knowledge (I)  // Doing Knowledge: Medien und Ordnungen des Wissens (I) 
    • Chair/Moderation: CORINNA DZIUDZIA
    • ESTHER WIPFLER: Das Motiv des Briefs in Gelehrtenporträts des 16. Jahrhunderts
    • STEFAN LAUBE:  Wie praktisch kann Wissen sein? Über How-to-Bücher
    • IRINA PODGORNY: From Provenance to Trajectory: Provincial Collections and the Making of Knowledge Beyond the Metropolis
  • 10.45–11.15  Coffee Break/Kaffeepause
  • 11.15–13.00  Doing Knowledge: Media and Systems of Knowledge (II)  // Doing Knowledge: Medien und Ordnungen des Wissens (II) 
    • Chair/Moderation: MALTE VAN SPANKEREN
    • HANNES AMBERGER: Pufendorfs Naturrecht als Projekt der Wissensorganisation
    • MICHELLE PFEFFER: Inventing Immortality: Heterodoxy and Histories of the Soul in Early Enlightenment England
    • WOLBERT SMIDT: Geheimschrift in äthiopischen Schutzrollen - Beitrag zum Verständnis von  arkanen Glaubenstraditionen im äthiopischen Hochland
  • 13.00–14.30  Lunch Break/Mittagspause 
  • 14.30–16.15 Connecting Far and Wide: Travel and Intercultural Encounters // Connecting Far and Wide: Reisen und interkulturelle Begegnungen 
    • Chair/Moderation: JORDANA DYM
    • HYUN-AH KIM:  Matteo Ricci and his Confucian Friends: Interfaith Friendships in the Clash of  Asian and European Humanisms
    • MELINDA SUSANTO: One Acmella Amongst Many: Reconstructing the Journeys of a Sri Lankan
    • MIRELA ALTIC:  Production of Knowledge in the Global Mapping Culture
  • 16.15  Closing & Farewell with Coffee & Tea/Verabschiedung bei Kaffee und Tee

CfP: Married, rejected, banished: divorced women of high nobility 1600-1850

Conference Poster, based on a blurred portrait of a woman with two children

Date: 28 - 30 September 2026
Organisation: Corinna Dziudzia (Wolfenbüttel), Markus Meumann (Gotha)

1826 - a union and a separation

The year 1826 marks a decisive turning point in European dynastic history: In November of that year, the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was created by the Treaty of Hildburghausen, whose ruling house established family ties with a large number of ruling princely houses through a skilful marriage policy in the 19th and early 20th centuries and ascended to the throne in several European countries. The birth of the ducal house was already based on a marriage, the marriage of Duke Ernst of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (1784-1844) to Princess Luise of Saxe-Gotha and Altenburg (1800-1831), the daughter of the penultimate Duke of Gotha, August, which took place in 1817 for political reasons. Although this union was essential for the Coburg line to assert itself against the other Ernestine houses, Ernst I divorced his wife in the very year the new duchy was founded. Two years earlier, Luise had already been banished to St. Wendel in the Principality of Lichtenberg (in today's Saarland), separated from her two sons, with whom she was no longer allowed to have any contact.

The conference planned jointly by the Gotha Research Centre and the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel is the first to systematically examine such cases of divorced women of high nobility from the 16th to the early 19th century on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the creation of the new duchy. In addition to well-known examples such as the English Queen Catherine of Aragon (1485-1536), the Hanoverian electoral princess Sophie Dorothea (1666-1726), who became famous as the "Princess of Ahlden", or the Danish Queen Caroline Mathilde (1751-1775), there are numerous other cases that have so far received little or no attention from historical research. These include one of Luise's contemporaries: Elisabeth Christine Ulrike von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (1746-1840) was divorced from her husband Frederick William II of Prussia in 1769 and exiled to Stettin, where she spent the remaining 70 years of her life.

Individual cases received media attention as 'tragic women's fates'; even at the time, these were sometimes highly discursive events that were discussed in pamphlets, newspapers or on medals. However, the underlying motives and contexts, such as the complex legal aspects of marriages with connotations of domination and power politics that become visible in these separations, have not yet been comprehensively analysed.

The aim of the conference is therefore to systematically analyse various similar examples of women from the high nobility who were repudiated and/or whose marriages ended in divorce. Of equal relevance are attempted divorces and the reasons why these did not ultimately take place. Why were divorces attempted? Which actors were involved? Who intervened and on whose side? How were the respective legal-historical or legal arguments put forward in detail? Did the separation also become a media topic? To what extent did the women concerned express themselves in letters or literature?

The analysis will focus on cases from the two lines of the House of Wettin and the House of Guelph, but the conference is expressly not limited to these. Case studies from other European countries can also be informative, as can contributions from other disciplines, for example from a theological, legal-historical or literary perspective. Proposals for presentations of approx. 25 minutes in length should be sent to markus.meumann@uni-erfurt.de and dziudzia@hab.de by 30 April 2026.

 

Literature (selection):

Baumann, Anette; Inken Schmidt-Voges; Siegrid Westphal: Venus und Vulcanus. Ehen und ihre Konflikte in der Frühen Neuzeit, Munich 2011.

Gäde, Katrin: Umstrittenes Eherecht. Handlungsstrategien und Aushandlungsprozesse in Ehescheidungsverfahren adliger Paare vom 18. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, in: Frühneuzeit-Info 26 (2015), pp. 142–151.

Iffert, Katrin: Gescheiterte Ehen im Adel. Trennung und Scheidung des Herzogpaares Alexius Friedrich Christian und Marie Friederike zu Anhalt-Bernburg (1794–1817), in: Eva Labouvie (Hrsg.): Adel in Sachsen-Anhalt, Cologne2007, pp. 9–122.

Lettmaier, Saskia: Spouses, Church, and State. Marriage Law in England and Protestant Germany from the Reformation until the Close of the Nineteenth Century, Tübingen 2025.

Walther, Stefanie: Die (Un-)Ordnung der Ehe. Normen und Praxis ernestinischer Fürstenehen in der frühen Neuzeit, Munich 2011.