Preliminary Programme

The looks of a king are a rather well known appearance. Though the ‘real’, individual looks vary throughout succession and kingdoms, the image of the royal ‘second’ body is a rather stable feature. But how does a king look like who isn’t a ‘real’ king at all but an illegitimate pretender? This question, if directed to the ‘representation’ of this king-being-no-king, is definitely more difficult to answer. Nevertheless it seems to be an interesting endeavour to be taken up – for it leads us directly to analysing the essential character of representation – its performative efficacy and the ‘conditions liturgiques’ (Bourdieu) which call the latter into being.
A nearly predestined test case for these questions can be found in the ‘Anabaptist kingdom’ which was erected in the town of Münster during the years 1534/5. This ‘New Jerusalem’, undoubtedly one of the most spectacular events in the whole Reformation period, with its ‘King’ Jan van Leiden didn’t only attract the attention of its contemporaries but endured also a flourishing reception in the following centuries. Not least characterized by many pictures and images, this reception produced almost a certain iconographic tradition especially focused at ‘King’ Jan. Interestingly that tradition oscillates between features of ‘normal’ royal or aristocratic representation strategies and polemical exposure as ‘arch’ heresy, cruellest tyranny and diabolic regiment. On the first glance, this ambivalence in the visualisation seems to simply match up to the ambivalent meaning the ‘Anabaptist kingdom’ is endowed with in the corresponding texts. But on closer inspection the imagery points at a specific problem which transcends that analogy between text and image. The task to depict the ‘auffgeworfen koninck’ (approximately: self-appointed king) leads inevitably to the conclusion that someone can look like a king but anyhow not be one at all – the old problem of ‘sheen and been’ (Schein und Sein).
Using the example of ‘King’ Jan van Leiden and the various and varying images of his, the paper will investigate the ambivalence of representation and its performativity. Analysing different visual strategies of fitting ‘sheen and been’ into one picture, I will discuss diverging forms of relations between image and text. Finally the paper addresses also the core problem of legitimating and authorising representation by asking for the function which the ‘representation of the illegitimate’ has. Can the images of Jan van Leiden be understood as (negative) part of a didactic and moral discourse on ‘true’ and ‘honest’ representation? (Show less)

As a rather conservative field of research the history of diplomacy was one of the last domains which got affected with approaches of new cultural history. Current studies emphasize in a general perspective the importance of diplomacy for early modern communication-networks and their public appearance, especially its representational quality relating to the theory of early modern symbolic communication.
Due to the fact that since the end of the 16th century diplomats obtained the central function to represent the ruler, to constitute, embody and heighten the rulers’ rank in the public – the focus of representation changed from an ‘authentic’ face-to-face communication between rulers to an indirect communication of representatives. In a society in which authorities and their legitimation are constituted through symbolic acts this change of representation must lead to a reaction – but not a determined reaction like critic or ignorance, but a flexible process of reactions between traditional and innovative forms of authorizing.
My paper focuses on the function of images in these processes. Because images were traditional used for creating, demonstrating and securing dynastical power and public commemoration it is supposable that they also were an adequate medium in conflicts of representational models and their authorization. Thus it is not surprising that since the 17th and 18th century, images of diplomatic acts were created systematically in a high number with different visual concepts between ‘mimesis’ and ‘allegory’. It raises the question in which quality these images obtained an active part in the contemporary political communication and the construction of social reality. Due to their aesthetical form images can contain visual strategies which have an affinity to ceremonial /representational logics, especially the visual concept of ‘mimesis’. Because ceremonial needs to be ‘authentic’ in its aesthetic form and non-ambiguous to legitimate and authorize the result it finds its counterpart in visualizations with a high ‘realistic’ manner. It raises the question in which way different visual concepts stand for and create evidence and stabilize or question a specific representational form in the named socio-political change. (Show less)

Investigating text and image relationships in illustrated history books in nineteenth-century Germany, my paper shows how symbolic communication (i.e. images, printing techniques, mass media production) had a decisive impact on the political, historical, and aesthetic construction of the German nation. Current scholars often neglect the visual aspect of German historicism by focusing on textual exegesis, narrative design, and written sources. My paper aims to change this perspective by exploring the circulation of images in the genre of illustrated history books; specifically the work on Prussian history by the art historian Franz Kugler and the painter Adolf Menzel Geschichte Friedrichs des Großen (1842). I argue that their new technique of illustration, wood engraving, created a revolutionary text and image relationship. In contrast to earlier illustrated history books, in which the image was put on a separate page and often was covered with a tissue (veil), wood engravings enabled printing illustrations directly into the text. Text and image seem to merge, creating a dynamic, immediate, and dramatic effect, which simulates that the past happens right in front of the reader’s eyes. These effects not only profoundly altered the interaction between text and reader, but also promoted the era of Frederick II as a modern national project tailored to a bourgeois mass audience. (Show less)

In 1651, after the death of William II of Orange, the States General gathered to constitute the United Provinces as a “truly free” Republic without the stadholderate. At the same time, painters like Gerard Houckgeest, Emanuel de Witte, or Hendrick van Vliet developed a new type of imagery: the monument for William I of Orange shown within its actual environment in the choir of the New Church in Delft, where he and his family members and successors in the office of stadholder, Maurits, Frederic Henry, and William II, have been buried. The artists used an oblique perspective which enabled the viewers to visually “approach” the monument from various points in the ambulatory. Literature has already convincingly argued that these paintings were possibly made for an Orangist public, and indeed, analyses shows that some of them present the memorial site as a demonstration of dynastic continuity and the house’s of Orange legitimate entitlement to the stadholderate.
As this paper will show, the new paintings not only display memoria, but also engage their beholders in formulating its current relevancy. The viewer is forced to actively imagine the presence of the commemorated pater patriae and in so doing to co-construct the political alternative. The monument objectified, or rather personified the stadholderate with the house of Orange and accounted for its continuation as an institution within the Dutch Republic – and be it as a negative foil – during the period of abolishment. This might be true alike for its painted “multiplications” which not only offer unambiguous interpretative frames but also involve the beholders’ memory and imagination in establishing the princely claim. (Show less)