Gotha Research Library

The Gotha Research Library is one of the most prominent German libraries with historic stocks from the 16th to the 18th century. Housed in Gotha’s Friedenstein Castle, it holds a remarkable collection on early modern and modern cultural history. After Berlin and Munich and alongside the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, it houses the most significant collection in Germany of historical sources from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. To these were added in 2003 the Perthes Collection Gotha from the holdings of the Justus Perthes Gotha press, established in 1785. It is considered one of the most significant cartographic collections worldwide.

The Library holds, keeps, and catalogues these sources, which are part of a European cultural heritage. The library collection encompasses c. 700,000 prints, of which about 350,000 are early modern. To this are added c. 11,500 manuscript volumes containing a considerable collection of manuscripts, autographs, and literary remains pertaining, among other things, to the cultural history of early modern Protestantism, as well as a collection of some 3,500 oriental manuscripts – the third largest of its kind in Germany. Moreover, the Library holds a remarkable collection of letters by German emigrants to America.

The Perthes collection with its collection of maps, cartographic library, and the press archives offers a unique collection in situ. The cartographic collection is comprised of c. 185,000 maps from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, produced by Perthes and other cartographic printers throughout the world. The cartographic-geographic library holds 120,000 volumes, a genealogical-statistical book collection, as well as a complete exemplar of the Almanach de Gotha, produced by the Perthes press. The press’ archive, with 800 linear metres of archival material, includes, inter alia, the transmission of the editing of Petermann’s Geographische Mitteilungen, a collection of the press’ specimen copies, as well as 1,650 copper plates. The Perthes collection is housed in the Perthes-Forum close-by Friedenstein Castle.