Article

New long-term project on 18th century libraries of duchesses in German-speaking countries has been approved by the DFG.

Welche Bücher besaßen Fürstinnen im deutschsprachigen Raum im 18. Jahrhundert? Was las man besonders gerne? Wie dokumentierten und rezipierten die Frauen ihre Lektüre? Gemeinsam mit der Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel wird das Trier Center for Digital Humanities diesen Fragen in den kommenden zwölf Jahren in einem Forschungsprojekt nachgehen.

[Translate to Englisch:] Bibelsammlung der Herzogin Elisabeth Sophie-Marie von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (Foto Caren Reimann) — [Translate to Englisch:] Bibelsammlung der Herzogin Elisabeth Sophie-Marie von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. Foto: Caren Reimann

Duchesses‘ libraries have repeatedly been the focus of researchers’ attention in recent years, but until now there has been no systematic analysis of the holdings, which are scattered throughout the German-speaking world. The project aims to address this issue and is pursuing the development of a digital platform with which the book holdings of princesses can be comprehensively reconstructed for the first time. This will also enable the qualitative investigation of the book-related knowledge practices of the duchesses. The study is based on 99 libraries that have been located in recent years. They have been handed down thanks to historical library and auction catalogues or other sources such as letters and diaries. In many cases, the original books can still be found in libraries today. One famous example is the Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, which holds the books of the duchess who gave the library its name. These copies can be used to discover traces of reading, such as underlining and notes, from which conclusions can be drawn about the princess's reading behaviour.

Contribution of Duchesses to Enlightenment

In order to obtain comparable and meaningful data on the book ownership of duchesses, the platform links bibliographical information on the books analysed with information specific to each example, for example on provenance or reading traces and biographical data, in order to create a knowledge graph. In this way, the intellectual and scholarly activities of the women are made visible and their substantial contribution to the knowledge-based society of the Enlightenment is revealed.

The project will thus make an innovative contribution to the gender-related history of knowledge and digital collection research, which can be connected to a variety of other areas of historical research.

Further information on the TCDH