Liu De is the second son of Emperor Liu Qi of the Han Dynasty, the half-brother of Liu Rong, the abandoned prince, the half-brother of Liu Che, and Li Ji, the imperial clan and bibliophile of the Western Han Dynasty.
In April two years before Emperor Jing of Han Dynasty, Liu De was made king of Hejian (now xian county, Hebei Province).
Liu De has made great contributions to the preservation and continuation of the precious heritage of ancient culture.
Liu De has been king for twenty-six years, and has never been involved in the political whirlpool, but devoted his life to the collection and collation of China cultural ancient books.
What needs special mention here is that Shi Mao and Zuo Zhuan, which have great influence on later generations, should be Liu Dezhi's achievements.
After being suspected by Liang Wudi, Liu De became worried and fell ill, and died in the fifth year of Yuanguang (BC 130).
Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty remembered his contribution and named him "King of Book Donation", which was commonly known as "King of Book Donation" by local people.
Extended data:
In Hanshu, Liu De is said to be "learning with an open mind and seeking truth from facts". He likes reading since he was a child, especially for Confucian classics, which has reached an almost obsessive level.
After arriving at the fief, Liu De took advantage of various opportunities to collect books.
In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, after Qin Shihuang burned books and buried Confucianism, folk books were very scarce.
What is even more rare is the discovery of poems, books and hundreds of languages mainly seized in Qin Shihuang's book burning order.
Liu De collects books at all costs! Anyone who brings his library to him will not only be rewarded with a large sum of money, but also send someone to copy one, leave the original book and let others take the copied one away.
At that time, besides Liu De, Liu An, the king of Huainan, also gathered a large number of books.
But relatively speaking, the books collected by Liu De are of higher quality.
Not only the common Confucian classics and pre-Qin philosophers, but also works such as Zuo Zhuan and Shi Mao that Han Gaozu didn't have were collected by Liu De.
In order to encourage the study of Confucian classics, Liu De also set up doctoral officers of Zuo Zhuan and Shi Mao in Hejian Kingdom.
The reason why we can still see these pre-Qin classics today is largely due to Liu De.