5. September, 2026
On Saturday, September 5, during the final week of the exhibition “The Court of the Muses. The Salon of Duchess Dorothea of Courland at Lēbihava Castle in the Caricatures of Ernst Welker,” on Saturday, September 5, at 2:00 p.m., interested visitors are invited to a lecture that will provide insight into Duchess Dorothea of Courland and Semigallia (1761–1821), the salon she once established at Lēbihava Castle, and the colorful personalities who frequented it in the early 19th century—figures immortalized in witty caricatures by the Austrian artist Ernst Welker (1784–1857).
Representatives from the Posterstein Castle Museum in Germany—Marlene Hofmann, head of marketing and communications, researcher of the Ernst Welker collection, and author of publications, as well as historian and exhibition curator Franziska Huberte—will deliver a lecture at Mežotne Castle. The speakers will invite the audience to explore the life story of Duchess Dorothea from the perspectives of two geographically distant yet closely connected places—Mežotne, where she was born, and Lebihava in Thuringia, Germany, where she spent the last decades of her life.
During the lecture, the researchers will introduce the places where Duchess Dorothea lived, as well as her life story, which is more extensively documented at the Posterstein Castle Museum, where a permanent exhibition is dedicated to Dorothea’s life and her era.
The lecture will be held in English. Admission to the lecture is included with the Mežotne Palace entrance ticket.
The exhibition “The Court of the Muses: Duchess Dorothea of Courland’s Salon at Lēbihava Castle in the Caricatures of Ernst Welker” will be on view at Mežotne Castle only until September 6.