Rudolf Erich Raspe

Rudolf Erich Raspe († 1794) was in the service of the Kassel court between 1767 and 1774 as curator at the Kassel Kunsthaus Museum Fridericianum and as professor of antiquities at the Collegium Carolinum. After a theft affair, he left Kassel in a hurry, leaving behind all his possessions, and large parts of his extensive correspondence (around 1100 letters) ended up in the collections of the landgraves.

They were transferred to the holdings of the Landesbibliothek and are now mainly under the shelfmarks 4° Ms. hist. litt. 2 and 2° Ms. hist. litt. 34.

Raspe 's name is today primarily associated with the stories of Baron Münchhausen. After his escape from Kassel, he published these anonymously and in English in exile in London. Rudolf Erich Raspe's significance as a universally educated and interested scholar of the Age of Enlightenment with a Europe-wide network has therefore only been recognized by a few specialists.

With his more than 200 correspondence partners throughout Europe, Raspe exchanged information about his diverse research interests in five languages. Besides philosophy, history of literature and language, these were above all geology and mineralogy. But he also enjoyed a high reputation as a connoisseur of coins, gems and cameos.

The Kassel University Library will successively digitize all Raspe letters in its holdings using its own funds and make them available via the online archive ORKA. References to the individual letters have already been incorporated into the central reference portal for bequests KALLIOPE.