International Library Scholarship for Literary Research at the Gotha Research Library

Libraries not only preserve literature - libraries can also inspire literature

On the joint initiative of the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Thuringia, the Friends of the Gotha Research Library e.V. and the Literarische Gesellschaft Thüringen e.V. , writers have had the opportunity to conduct research at the Gotha Research Library with a scholarship since 2021.

The Gotha Research Library at Friedenstein Castle is one of the most important historical libraries in the German-speaking world. It holds more than 700,000 printed works, including around 350,000 prints from the 16th to 19th centuries. There are also around 11,500 manuscripts. The core of its universally orientated collections until around 1850 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 and the intensively researched area of the Illuminati Order in Gotha are also suitable for literary discoveries. In addition to current literature from the Gotha Research Library, users can access more than one million monographs and journals as well as databases and electronic media from the Erfurt University Library in Gotha.

The research grant, which is awarded in cooperation with the Kulturstiftung des Freistaats Thüringen, the Freundeskreis der Gotha Research Library e.V., the Gotha Research Centre and the Literarische Gesellschaft Thüringen e.V., is aimed at authors of all literary genres (novel, poetry, drama, etc.) who wish to work with the holdings of the Gotha Research Library during the research phase of their literary projects.