Valuable support came from donors and from her chief steward, Anton Kroll von Freyhan, who administered the major book purchases that were central to the project.

It is clear from the dedications included with the volumes that Elisabeth never hesitated to invite the abbey's visitors to make their own generous contributions to the book acquisition programme.

[6] In 1695 a previous abbess, Henriette Christine, had successfully negotiated (with her father[a]) the return to the control of Gandersheim of the former monastery at Brunshausen, set in the countryside a fifteen-minute walk to the north of the town.

Between 1713 and 1726 Abbess Elisabeth had the badly degraded former monastery rebuilt as a small "summer palace" set in its own "Baroque Garden", and equipped with its own "study and collection rooms".

This prestige project was completed in 1736, constituting an impressive memorial to the imperial devotion and the lavish "princessly court" created by the well-connected Abbess Elisabeth for her abbey.

When Anton Ulrich found himself in dispute with his younger half-brothers, he could always rely on the robust backing of his elder sister, the Abbess Elisabeth.