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

公爵夫人路易丝·多萝西娅·冯·萨克森-哥达-阿尔滕堡（1710-1767）对18世纪德国哥达宫廷的政治和文化生活产生了重大影响。人们理所当然地称赞她是科学和艺术的杰出支持者。因此，她是在文化和政治上塑造了早期现代欧洲的众多公主之一，不仅通过她们自己的教育作品和社会成员身份，还通过她们在哲学和美学领域的网络。他们对政治和社会生活的影响可以从他们的藏书中“读到”，但这一点在公爵夫人身上体现得最为明显。她的私人藏书3600本书，不仅是哥达宫廷14个私人藏书中最大的女性藏书，而且比她的丈夫弗里德里希三世的藏书还要多。鉴于她的法国情结以及她与伏尔泰和其他人的大量通信，这个收藏以前被认为是“法国”的。然而，令人惊讶的是，这里有大约100位英国作家（其中一些是女性）和大量印刷品，显示出对英格兰、苏格兰、爱尔兰、美国或印度事务的兴趣。不仅像乔治·伯克利、拉尔夫·卡德沃斯、安东尼·柯林斯或弗朗西斯·哈奇森这样的道德或哲学著作占据了突出的位置——这是一种不久前才发现的倾向——而且各个艺术领域的出版物也是如此。除了喜欢漂亮的信件，你还会发现英语期刊和百科全书，以及政治、宗教、历史、科学和旅行方面的书籍，这只是其中的一些类型。该项目旨在系统地重建和分析作为公爵夫人全部收藏的一部分的“英国国教图书馆”，以展示其背景意义。最初，将考虑文化转移的做法，在这种情况下，将集中于通过法语进行更复杂的三边调解。接下来，我们将关注这本合集的特殊性质，例如，它在“美丽的信件”和“历史”部分中包含了大量的英国女性作家。最后，研究将重点放在习得实践和通过书籍可见的社会网络上。这将使我们对露易丝·多萝西娅在这个“活图书馆”中所扮演的角色得出深远的结论。这个双重结果将以印刷专著和“英国国教图书馆”（通过图书馆重建工具LibReTo）的数字展示（每一项）的形式呈现。它将为早期现代欧洲项目提供宝贵的研究机会，不仅在图书馆研究、数字人文、性别和贵族研究领域，而且在跨文化研究领域尤其如此。

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.