La Belle Anglaise Duchesse Luise Dorothea of Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg. The Book Collector as Mediator of English Culture.

• Applicant: Dr. Gabriele Ball
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature)
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 528354677

Duchess Luise Dorothea von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg (1710-1767) strongly influenced political and cultural life at the court of Gotha in eighteenth-century Germany. She is rightly acclaimed an irenic supporter of science and the arts. As such, she is one of a number of princesses who shaped Early Modern Europe culturally and politically, not only with their own works on education and their membership in societies, but also through their networking in the fields of philosophy and aesthetics. Their impact on political and social life can be “read” from their book collections, but in no case is this more true than that of the Duchess. Her private collection of 3600 books represents not only the largest woman’s library of the fourteen private collections at the court of Gotha, but is also more extensive than that of her husband, Friedrich III. Given her francophilia and her substantial correspondence with Voltaire and others, this collection has previously been considered to be a “French” one. Surprisingly, though, there are about 100 English authors (some of them women) and a number of prints, revealing an interest in English, Scottish, Irish, American or Indian affairs. Not only do moral or philosophical works, like those by George Berkeley, Ralph Cudworth, Anthony Collins or Francis Hutcheson figure prominently – an inclination discovered some time ago —, but also publications from every area of the arts. Apart from her preference for belles lettres, one finds English journals and encyclopedias, also books on politics, religion, history, science and travel, just to name a few genres. This project aims to reconstruct and analyze systematically the „Bibliotheca Anglicana“ as part of the Duchess’ entire collection in order to demonstrate its contextual significance. Initially, the practices of cultural transfer will be considered, concentrating, in this case, on the more complex trilateral mediation via French. Next, attention will be directed to the exceptional nature of this collection e. g. its inclusion of a significant number of English women writers in the sections on Belles Lettres and History. Finally, the research will focus on the acquisition practice and the social network made visible through the books. This will allow for far-reaching conclusions about the role Luise Dorothea played in this “living library”. The twofold result will take the form of a printed monograph and a digital presentation of (every item of) the „Bibliotheca Anglicana“ (by means of the library reconstruction tool LibReTo). It will provide valuable research opportunities for projects on Early Modern Europe, not only in the areas of library research and digital humanities, gender and nobility studies, but also, indeed especially, in the area of transcultural studies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants