The doctorate of Dorothea von Schlözer caused upheaval far beyond Göttingen. Many of her contemporaries saw it as a transgression of current gender roles. This included former Göttingen student Wilhelm Friedrich August Mackensen (1768-1798) who recalled dismissively: Schlözer would lose her femininity over her learnedness. He was particularly offended by the fact that even during her lifetime, painted portraits and busts were created showing her as a classical scholar.
“If you just left it at that, doing comedy with the good girl, you could still make good once more. But you go on, and make her crazy with flattery and spoil her. She is engraved in copper and hewn in marble – Yes, yes, she is hewn in stone, don’t think I’m babbling. You will find her bust in the Mathemetics department of the library.” (Wilhelm Friedrich August Mackensen: Letztes Wort über Göttingen und seine Lehrer. Mit unter wird ein Wörtchen raisonnirt, Leipzig 1791, hier, S. 76.)