From hagiographies to contemporary literature: Lina Thiede awarded the Gotha Library Fellowship

Born in 1996, the writer has won numerous awards. She has been a laureate of the Young Literature Forum of Hesse-Thuringia and the hr2 Literature Prize, and has received the Berlin Prize for Science Fiction as well as the Robert Gernhardt Prize from the State of Hesse in 2025. Literarily, she works in the fields of both science fiction and fantasy as well as in autofictional forms, and focuses in particular on social class consciousness and the role of women. Following her debut novel “Homo Femininus” (2020), her second novel, “Manchmal weißt du, was geschehen wird” ("Sometimes You Know What Will Happen"), was published in spring 2025.

Lina Thiede is currently conducting research in Gotha for her new novel project, provisionally titled “Dies Irae” (Latin for “Day of Wrath”). At the heart of the story is the figure of a solitary goddess of fate, situated at the intersection of holiness and hatred, physicality and innocence, and heresy and subversion. For this literary work, Thiede draws on a wide range of collections held by the Research Library: Thiede is equally interested in medieval manuscripts such as the lives of saints and the Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well as Reformation-era and early modern theological writings on denominational debates, and funeral sermons dealing with piety, transience and the relationship between the body and death.

“I am really looking forward to the intensive research work in Gotha,” says Thiede. “The scholarship is a unique opportunity to give my project more substance. What appeals to me most of all is the question: how can I incorporate past debates, images and ideas into my current text, and where are the overlaps with current developments?”