Background - Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft Digital Exhibit - The Library - University of... - 1 views
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Conrad Ferdinand on 05 Apr 10„In August 1617 a small group of Saxon nobles gathered in Castle Hornstein near Weimar to establish a type of institution previously unknown on German soil ‚the learned society'. It was based on the Italian model of the previous century and specifically on the Academia della Crusca of Florence, to whose ranks one of its founding members, Prince Ludwig of Anhalt-Köthen, had been elected in 1600. Ludwig was the chief benefactor and the head of this new German society until his death in 1650, and he and its other founding members sought inspiration in their pursuit of learning from the many Italian literary societies which had contributed so much to the purification and normalization of Italian letters in the sixteenth century. The new German society was called the ‚Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft', the Fruitbearing Society, and its motto was „Alles zum Nutzen" - ‚Everything for a purpose'".