Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Anna Amalia, 1758-1775, Conventionsthaler 1763
Obv.Medium sized and drap. bust l.
Rev.Crowned coat of arms
Historical
Anna Amalia (1739-1807) was a Princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel by birth and the Duchess of Saxe-Weimar and Eisenach by marriage.
She married Duke Ernst August II. Constantin in 1756 at the age of 17 and gave birth to the Hereditary Prince Carl August the following year. In 1758 - pregnant again with her second son Friedrich Ferdinand Constantin - Anna Amalia lost her husband to consumption. He lived to be only 21 years old.
According to her husband's will, Anna Amalia assumed guardianship of her two sons and the regency of the duchies of Weimar and Eisenach. She minted coins with her monogram (Scheidemünzen) and her portrait (Kurantmünzen); her portrait is also found on the coin offered here. She proved to be a self-confident ruler of coins, who did not only want to be a deputy, but also showed a will to shape things. Thus she began reforms in the judiciary and education.
She kept her eldest son Carl August under her guardianship until 1775. After that, Anna Amalia ran her own court in the Wittumspalais in Weimar and was active as a patron, art lover and composer. Among her closest friends were Goethe and Schiller.
Library of Anna Amalia - also known as the "Thuringian State Library
The famous library of Anna Amalia in Weimar is today one of the largest private book collections of German princesses of the 18th century with around 5000 volumes.
In addition to the French classics and the writings of Voltaire, Wolff, John Locke and Kant, among others, the library also includes the works of Shakespeare and "a surprising amount of literature by women, about women and for women" (Bärbel Raschke). The collection also had several French and English literary histories as well as a ten-volume history of European women's literature from antiquity to the present Parnasse des Dames (Anthology) by Louis-Édme Billardon de Sauvigny (1736-1812). It is fitting that her collection also includes copies of profeminine defence writings of the Querelle des femmes.
Anna Amalia died after a short illness at the age of 68. She remained a widow until the end of her life.
