"Herzog-Ernst" Stipend Programme at the Research Centre "Altes Buch / Alte Karte" (Old Book / Old Map), Gotha-Erfurt

The programme of stipends for visiting scholars is designed to support and intensify the scholarly use of the holdings of the research library in Gotha. The former ducal library at Friedenstein Castle in Gotha housed one of the most important collections of old books and manuscripts in Germany - 220,000 volumes printed before 1851 and about 10,500 handwritten volumes. Thus the Gotha Library is the most important library of historical documents of the 16th and 18th centuries in Germany, second only to the state libraries in Berlin and Munich, and comparable in importance to the Herzog-August Library in Wolfenbüttel.

The stipend programme of the Gotha library attempts to take into account the rich holdings and the universal spirit of the library, and for this reason the stipend programme, both thematically and from the point of view of interdisciplinary studies, has an open quality. The following topics which are given special emphasis in this programme reflect particularly strong areas in the research library:

• The culture of the German and European court at Gotha;
• The ducal library and the cultivation of knowledge, from the early travel reports and regional studies to the modern geo- and astrosciences;
• The reception and history of European literature - from national literature to world literature;
• The history of religions in the ancient classical period, in Protestantism and in Islam;
• Philosophy and literature of the German and European enlightenment.