New acquisitions of the Gotha Research Library

The cradle of the kindergarten was in Thuringia: Friedrich Fröbel (1782-1852) founded the first institution of this kind in Bad Blankenburg in 1840. He aimed to provide a natural education for the healthy and complete development of young children in the first years of life. The Gotha kindergarten was founded in 1845 by Fröbel's student Christine Erdmann. At the spring auctions, the Gotha Research Library was able to acquire a remarkable copy of Fröbel's "Mutter- und Kose-Liedern" ("Mother and Cose Songs", Blankenburg 1844). The newly acquired first edition comes from the possession of the Gotha kindergarten teacher Bernhardine Herold (1812-1885), who was in correspondence with Froebel, and bears her name. The book is more an educational book than a songbook and was aimed at mothers. The song texts are framed by engravings by the painter and Nazarene Friedrich Unger (1811-1858).

In the area of European manuscripts, interesting items were acquired, among them an anthology with several hundred coin imprints from the second half of the 18th century (Chart. A 2558) and several letters to the Dukes Ernst I (1601-1675), Friedrich II (1676-1732) and Friedrich III. (1699-1772) of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg.

Furthermore, a letter by the Illuminati Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830) from the year 1808 was acquired, in which he complains, among other things, that the local library is almost closed to him.

Several autographs with biographies of the mathematician and jurist Carl Anton Bretschneider (1808-1878) and his son Alfred were donated to the library. Among the new acquisitions in the Orientalia section is a print of the Persian work Maḫzan al-ʿulūm from the Naval Kishore Press (Kanpur, North India, 1873). It is a unique universal encyclopaedia with an encyclopaedic character.