Library Scholarship for Authors

It is intended to support an outstanding artistic project that is characterised by exceptional quality and independence. The prerequisite for an application is a concrete research project in the holdings of the Gotha Research Library. In addition, at least one literary publication in a recognised publishing house must be submitted with the application.

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 Duchy of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, which existed from 1640 to 1825, and the collections of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, which were collected in Gotha between 1826 and 1945. The core of its collections is the outstanding collection of manuscripts, autographs and bequests on the cultural history of Protestantism in the early modern period. The collection of around 3,500 oriental manuscripts is one of the largest of its kind in Germany. The Gotha Perthes Collection includes unique source material on the development of cartography and geography in the 19th and 20th centuries. The library also preserves an important collection of letters from German emigrants to America from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The rich holdings of travel literature, the estate of the science fiction author Kurd Laßwitz or the intensively researched field of the Illuminati Order 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.

You can find more information about the scholarship on the website of the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Thuringia.