Laureate 2025: Steffen Schroeder (Potsdam)

Man stands in front of ceiling-high shelves in library room
Steffen Schröder, this year's library scholarship holder in Gotha (c) Cultural Foundation of Thuringia

The writer and actor Steffen Schroeder receives the Gotha Library Fellowship. In November 2025, he will be researching, writing and making discoveries in the Gotha Research Library. Between manuscripts, natural history studies and documents related to the history of theatre, Schroeder will search for traces of two extraordinary personalities. Georg Friedrich Treitschke (1767-1842) and his friend Ferdinand Ochsenheimer (1767-1822) were butterfly researchers, stage artists and contemporary witnesses of the Goethe era. Their work, long forgotten, is to be revitalised in literary form.

Steffen Schroeder was born in Munich in 1974. As an actor, he was a member of the Vienna Burgtheater and the Berlin Ensemble and has appeared in numerous film and television productions. His debut as a writer was published in 2017. His novel "Der ewige Tanz", about the life of dancer and actress Anita Berber (1899-1928), was published in March of this year.