SFB 2012-2024
The Collaborative Research Centre SFB 948 “Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms: Transformations and Conjunctures from Antiquity to the Modern Day” studied the heroic from a transdisciplinary, cultural, historical and social perspective. The SFB was particularly interested in the social orders that heroic figures stabilize and simultaneously call into question, and examined why and how heroines and heroes have so persistently served as figures upon which communities can focus their self-understanding. Scholars of history, literature, visual arts, Islamic studies, sinology, sociology, theology, and philosophy contributed to the SFB’s transdisciplinary research programme.
This section serves to document the the work of the Collaborative Research Center SFB 948 and its its project groups in the three funding periods from 2012 to 2024.
On the Collaborative Research Centres (Sonderforschungsbereiche) of the German Research Foundation
Final Report (in German) after October
Funding Period 1 (2012 - 2016)
Research Paper "Das Heroische"
This literature report of selected publications from roughly the past ten years makes the attempt to sketch the direction and findings of a very disparate, transdisciplinary sphere of cultural history that is gaining currency. In the form of a critical review it is to be shown how manifestations, functions and meanings of heroines and heroes have been valued from Greek antiquity until the modern day. For reasons of space constraints this report focuses primarily on the European perspective and German research. The article therefore aims to contribute to further developing and opening the discourse on this topic by highlighting current questions for future individual and joint research. The review was written by members of the DFG Collaborative Research Center 948 “Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms” at the University of Freiburg, Germany.
Projects
Project Group A | Articulations
Project Group A concerns itself with the primary forms in which the heroic is stated and presented in a diachronic overview and from the perspective of different disciplines.
This project concentrates on a comparative analysis of the historical semantics of the conceptual cluster ‘hero’, ‘heroism’, ‘heroic’ in the saddle epoch from the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century in Germany, France and Britain. In the sense of a ‘rich’ historical semantics, the project will take different categories of sources and speech situations into account for different European spaces of experience. This will allow insight into unreflected, daily uses of the conceptual cluster, leading to a historical explanation of the transformation of social norms and political ideas in dealing with the exceptional.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Jörn Leonhard
Research associates: Faustin Vierrath (Juli 2013 – Dezember 2013), Maximilian Höhn (from Januar 2014)
Period: 2012-2016
This project will explore the influence of Greek concepts of heroic behavior and qualities on the configuration of Hellenistic kings as gods and addressees of cult. In turn, it will investigate the impact this transformation had on hero cult, ancestor worship and other forms of cultic worship in Hellenistic poleis. The project will concentrate on the Ptolemaic monarchy in Egypt between 323 and 30 BC, paying particular attention to the intercultural context in which ideas of the hero were equally formative as Egyptian ideas of religious kingship.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Sitta von Reden
Research associate: Thibaut Boddez, Carla Gebauer
Period: 2012-2016
Situated in the fields of medieval Latin and medieval history, this project will use hagiographic texts of the early Middle Ages to examine how the semantics and various ways of representing saints and heroes are intertwined. In contrast to previous research approaches, the project does not depart from an opposition between the lay and clerical, or the pagan and Christian spheres. During the early Middle Ages, especially in the 10th and 11th centuries, the concepts of ‘hero’ and ‘saint’ were inextricably connected, and this had a lasting effect on European culture.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Felix Heinzer, Prof. Dr. Birgit Studt
Research associate: PD Dr. Lenka Jiroušková, Eva Ferro, Stephan Bruhn (Januar 2013 – März 2013), Jérémy Winandy (ab Mitte April 2013)
Period: 2012-2016
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This project investigates the visual representation of heroic concepts in public sculptural monuments, with a focus on Italy and France. The diachronic and comparative study concentrates on the period from about 1300 to 1800. It aims at a history of forms and functions of the hero monument, at a history of commemorative practices associated with them and at explanations of the changing concepts of heroic virtue on which pre-modern monuments are based.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Hans W. Hubert
Research associate: Katharina Helm
Period: 2012-2016
This project examines the transformation of the heroic and its representation or medialisation in France from the 17th to the 19th century. The focus is on the ambivalent notion of ‘éclat’ as the simultaneous expression of the heroic aura (brightness, resplendence) and the scandal of heroic (mis)behaviour, i. e., of heroisation vs. de-heroisation. The emphasis is on the evolution of the original aristocratic concept of the hero in post-revolutionary French society together with its new heroic reference values, including reason (‘éclat de la raison’) and liberty (‘éclat de la liberté’), among others. Further insight is to be expected in relation to the role of literature and its aesthetic ‘éclat’ in the process of heroisation.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Andreas Gelz
Research associate: Jakob Willis
Period: 2012-2016
The project will investigate changes in the articulation of the heroic in the European opera of the first half of the 19th century. It will analyse an essential aspect of the medial effect of the heroic, its vocal presentation, from the perspective of the close relationship between the conceptions of works and their performance and their contemporary reception, the goal being to reveal similarities and differences in the national characteristics of the heroic in Germany, France and Italy.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Thomas Seedorf
Research associate: Carolin Hauck (geb. Bahr)
Period: 2012-2016
Project Group B | Models
In Project Group B, the research focuses on the processes by which certain persistent models of the heroic are formed, changed and contestably accepted or rejected by a society.
The aim of this project is the analysis and historical explanation of the transformation and appropriation processes of the heroic ruler model created for the portraits of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC. It will examine for the first time its formations in the visual arts until the beginning of late antiquity (late 3rd century AD) in conjunction with the imitatio Alexandri in other portraits and in images of gods and heroes. The project will focus on the sociopolitical conditions and legitimising functions of its transformations, of heroisms that it conditioned and of its relationship to the images of gods and heroes.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Ralf von den Hoff
Research associates: Dr. Jens-Arne Dickmann; Dr. Martin Kovacs, Martin Dorka Moreno (geb. Schwemmer)
Period: 2012-2016
The project will provide the first systematic assessment of the social construction of models for the scientist as hero during the long 17th century, i. e. the time in which the New Sciences were established in Europe. The starting point will be the representations and the (self-)fashioning of scholars like Brahe, Galileo, Bacon and Newton. The project will ask how and why the model of the scientist-hero, which found its principal audience in the res publica litteraria, influenced methods and practices of the New Sciences, strengthened bonds within its communities and served as a means to create a greater distance between academic science and practioners of both sexes who had no university education.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Ronald G. Asch
Research associate: Monika Mommertz
Period: 2012-2016
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This project investigates the correlation between arts patronage and the heroisation of the sovereign in the 17th century. Against the backdrop of the Thirty Years’ War, the traditional medialisation of the war hero is flanked by the ‘art hero’. The assumption is that this artistically legitimated representation of the sovereign lends a specific semantic and iconographic form to the contemporary topic of peace. The development of this type in textual and visual sources will be analysed on the basis of sovereign-artist constellations, principally in early-modern Germany.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Anna Schreurs-Morét
Research associates: Dr. Christina Posselt-Kuhli
Period: 2012-2016
This project investigates the heroisation of American presidents between 1790 and ca. 1870. It is based on the assumption that the heroisation of George Washington brought into existence a new model of the hero used to heroify all subsequent presidents until Abraham Lincoln. The project focuses on the many poems and songs about American presidents written during this period, but takes other kinds of material into consideration as well. It aims at analysing the functions that this model of the hero served for the young republic as well as the heroisms that it conditioned.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Michael Butter
Research associate: Katharina Thalmann
Period: 2012-2016
This project investigates Bonapartism in a comparative European perspective, as a contemporary and controversial heroisation of Bonaparte/Napoleon I between 1800 und the 1870s. The project concentrates on France, Germany and Britain. Against the backdrop of affirmative and critical interpretations of Napoleon as a new kind of political hero, it will research the general transformation of politics and changing views concerning the legacy of the French Revolution in nineteenth-century Europe.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Jörn Leonhard
Research associate: Benjamin Marquart
Period: 2012-2016
This project studies historical trends concerning two different models of the heroic and heroisms in Russia from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries. It analyses the patterns of two heroic figurations: a national hero, General Aleksandr Suvorov, and a leader of a rebellion, Yemelyan Pugachev. The project will relate these patterns to changing political and social circumstances in Russia. Its approach concentrates on lifeworlds, communication, medialisation and practices of the heroic and of heroism.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Dietmar Neutatz
Research associate: Dr. Reinhard Nachtigal
Period: 2012-2016
The project investigates in a historical perspective the contradiction between the dominant antiheroic orientation of early sociology and the presence of heroic motifs in sociological discourse. On the one hand, it carves out heroic metaphors, narratives and semantics in classical sociological texts from 1830 to 1850 and from around 1900. On the other hand, the confrontation with these heroic motifs allows an exploration of the theoretical potential of social theory for describing phenomena of irregularity and transgression.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Bröckling
Research associate: Dr. Tobias Schlechtriemen
Period: 2012-2016
This project investigates the emergence, transformation and variety of heroisation strategies in the works of Stefan George and his circle. It is based on the assumption that George propagates a heroism that differs profoundly from the official heroic canon of Wilhelminism due to its pronounced elitist and aesthetic profile. The first section of the project aims at reconstructing the practices of heroisation in George’s lyrical works, while the second section analyses heroic biographies by members of the George circle.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Achim Aurnhammer
Research associate: Ann-Christin Bolay
Period: 2012-2016
Project Group C | Competition
The research being done in Project Group C focuses on notable competitions surrounding the heroic. Those sustaining these competing heroizations and heroisms are for the most part different social (or national) groups.
This project aims to systematically and comparatively investigate the function of heroic behaviour for the formation of noble culture and collective mentality in the late Middle Ages (ca. 1380–1530) in the German Empire, France and Burgundy. By analysing heroic cultures at the Valois court of Burgundy and in groups of German and French knights, itwill shed light on the competition between different heroic images within noble society. The main source material consists of historiographic texts (especially biographies) and vernacular translations of heroic literature from ancient Greek and Roman mythology. The aim is to show how heroic images were functionalised in order to stabilise different groups of nobles against the backdrop of historical change in the late Middle Ages.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Birgit Studt
Research associate: Dr. Gero Schreier
Period: 2012-2016
The project will investigate competing models of heroism in England and France in the late 16th and early 17thcenturies. Images of the hero and the heroic were deeply influenced in this period by the clash between hostile confessional communities. At the same time, the decline of violent religious conflict after the turn of the century produced new cultural patterns of heroism for which the true hero was less a man of action than somebody – man or woman – who was able control his/her passions and showed superhuman power through godliness and Christian virtue. Thesechanging models of the hero also had marked impact on monarchical self-representation, which is one of the problems the project will focus on.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Ronald G. Asch
Researche associate: Andreas Schlüter
Period: 2012-2016
Heroic drama of the late 17th century was marked by a significant accumulation of exotic, i. e., non-European, heroes and heroines. The project will consider these characters in relation to social ideals that had become precarious and as a reaction to the increased representational needs of monarchs and the nobility. The project aims to describe and analyse the forms and functions of, and the reasons for, these exotic heroic characters, and it will be the first to do so from a comparative perspective. The analysis will be based on a comprehensive investigation of German and English plays and operas.
Principal investigators: Prof. Dr. Achim Aurnhammer, Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte
Research associates: Dr. Christiane Hansen, Doris Lechner (November 2013 – März 2014), Mirjam Döpfert (November 2013 – Juli 2014)
Period: 2012-2016
The project investigates semantic differentiations of the heroic that were characteristic of British society during the Victorian period. As a new mass medium with wide circulation and considerable diversification, magazines are aparticularly apt material for this kind of analysis. Using methods from literary and cultural studies as well as book history, the project will analyse family, women’s, children’s and comic magazines and ask how they reflect the contemporary pluralisation of and competition between notions of the heroic.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte
Research associate: Christiane Hadamitzky
Period: 2012-2016
Integrated Research Training Group (IGK) 2012-2016
The integrated Research Training Group aims to support the CRC’s doctoral researchers and their special needs with a structured but flexible training programme. This programme is designed to familiarise doctoral students with the principles and practices of collaborative research, to provide them with additional mentoring, to promote their independence (through a self-organised forum, GRAFO), to provide options for further qualifications and to help themestablish national and international contacts.
Members
Carolin Bahr (Project A7, Musicology)
Thibaut Boddez (Project A2, Ancient History)
Ann-Christin Bolay (Project B8, German Studies)
Eva Ferro (Project A3, Latin Philology of the Middle Ages)
Carla Gebauer (Project A2, Ancient History)
Christiane Hadamitzky (Project C4, English Studies)
Katharina Helm (Project A4, Art History)
Maximilian Höhn (Project A1, Humanities)
Benjamin Marquart (Project B5, History)
Andreas Schlüter (Project C2, History)
Gero Schneider (Project C1, History)
Martin Dorka Moreno (née Schwemmer) (Project B1, Classical Archaeology)
Jakob Willis (Project A5, Romance Studies)
Jérémy Winandy (Project A3, History)
Dr Christiane Hansen (Project C3, English/Germanic Studies)
Dr Martin Kovacs (Project B1, Classical Archaeology)
Dr Christina Kuhli (née Posselt) (Project B3, Art History)
Dr Monika Mommertz (Project B2, History)
Dr Reinhard Nachtigal (Project B6, History)
Dr Tobias Schlechtriemen (Project B7, Sociology)
Marion Deschamp (History)
Colin Gilmour (History)
Klaudija Sabo (Art History/Media Studies)
Anne-Marie Wurster (Musicology)
Nora Asmuth (History, University of Freiburg)
Mirjam Döpfert (German Studies, University of Freiburg)
Fiona Fritz (History, University of Kiel)
Olmo Gölz (Iranian Studies, University of Freiburg) Scholarship holder of the IGK
Andreas Haller (Literary Studies, University of Bonn) Scholarship holder of the IGK
Svenja Hohenstein (American Studies, University of Tübingen)
Kristina Sperlich (English Studies, University of Freiburg)
Friederike Richter (Scandinavian Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Scholarship holder of the IGK
Antonia Rüth (Archaeology, University of Freiburg) Scholarship holder of the IGK
Funding Period 2
Projects
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Peter Eich, Prof. Dr. Ralf von den Hoff, Prof. Dr. Sitta von Reden
Research associate: Sebastian Bauer, Matthias Bensch
Period: 2016-2020
In collaboration with the Departments of Ancient History and Archaeological Sciences, this project examines the role of mythological heroes, real-life heroes and heroization in visual and textual media in the Roman Empire and the kingdoms of the post-Roman world between the 1st century BCE and the 7th century CE. At the centre of this research is the question of which foundational cohesions, identity constructions and conflict escalations were achieved in the changing political atmosphere of a loosely held together Roman Empire through attraction to the heroic, as well as through the hero and ruler figures behind the construction of “political myths”.
This project is further divided into three subprojects. The Classical Archaeology team is working on a project titled “Aeneas, Romulus, and the Princeps: Models of Heroic Figures in the Roman Empire from Augustus to Late Antiquity”. Alongside other research goals, Matthias Bensch’s dissertation project, for example, investigates the role of visual elements in the reciprocal heroizations of the founding heroes of Rome and that of the Princeps in both Rome and the provinces during the transition to the Principate from the late 1st century BCE to the 4th century CE. This timeframe overlaps with Subproject B, in which Sebastian Bauer (Ancient History) is researching the pattern of heroic elements in Greek identity constructs during Roman rule from the 1st to the 3rd century, using the Greek-Roman Parallelviten of Plutarch and epigraphic documentation of Greek cities as a basis. This dissertation project is titled “Vom Heros zum Held: Transformationen des Heroischen in griechischen Städten unter römischer Herrschaft” (“From Mythological Hero to Non-Mythological Hero: Transformations of the Heroic in Greek Cities under Roman Rule”). In his planned book, “Heroisierungen in Zeiten der Orientierungslosigkeit: Umschreibungen monarchischer Rollen in der nachjustinianischen Mittelmeerwelt” (“Heroization in the Time of Disorientation: Understanding Monarchical Roles in the Post-Justinian Mediterranean”), project leader Peter Eich will research the Emperor and West European monarchs in the Mediterranean, a region strongly culturally influenced by Rome, in a somewhat later transformation period. His research will focus on the conception of a new type of heroic monarchy, with its roots in Christian rule, which developed in the 6th and 7th centuries. Through the analysis of historiography, poetry and epistolography, this subproject strives to provide a better understanding of the conceptualization of how rulers were conceived in areas that were culturally related to one another but with varying political histories (Byzantine Empire, Italy, Gaul, Iberian Peninsula). Additionally, this project will also result in a report presenting a long-term perspective of the conceptions of how heroes are conceived and transformed in a transcultural study of the Roman Empire.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Birgit Studt, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Dendorfer
Research associate: Thomas Nitschke, Thilo Tress
Period: 2016-2020
This project explores alternative models of heroic ascription beyond the established dichotomies between saints and knights, or between militaristic elites who were influenced by the Church and those influenced by lay nobles or the community. The 11th and 12th centuries are understood as a much-debated pivotal period in the formation of knighthood and the culture of knights and the court. Because heroic action based on violence and heroic warriors – as well as the militaristic princes and kings who led them – of this time period have already been researched to a large extent, much of the background for this topic has already been established. Nonetheless, the heroization developing in a changing world in which social relationships were regulated and war had become economized and mechanized has not been sufficiently studied. This project thus analyzes the heroization and deheroization of warriors in relation to the social, economic and legal dynamics of the Middle Ages and the challengesthis posed for both heroic acts and the traditional heroic model.
When looking at the differential state of research regarding these new challenges in the High Middle Ages, it becomes obvious that the idea of knighthood does not adequately describe the processes of the heroization found in the Latin chronicles and epics of the 11th to 13thcenturies. The project thus focuses on the three following essential phenomena:
1) The representation of violence: Although it was the primary “craft” of the militaristic elite, violence has tended to be marginalized in earlier research as the work of the “knight” through an idealized perspective of the times. The focus of this project will therefore be the heroic meaning of the use of violence as being concurrent with the rationalization for waging war.
2) The presence and reappropriation in the High Middle Ages of alternative heroic models of antiquity that are modeled after the ancient heroes Achilles or Aeneas – for example, in therepresentation of warrior or ruler figures.
3) The negotiation of different historical heroic constructions in areas of increasing cultural contact; such as in Italy during the High Middle Ages, where three areas influenced by different experiences encountered one another: the kingdom north of the Alps, communal northern Italy and the hybrid societies of southern Italy and Sicily, which were influenced by Latin, Byzantine and Arabic cultures.
The specific theme of this study is structured around the Norman Conquest and rule of southern Italy and Sicily in the 11th and 12th centuries and the conflicts between the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and the northern Italian municipalities in the 12thcentury.
This project analyzes those processes of heroization that strove to legitimize and integrate the new ruling elite as along with the discourse surrounding violent forms of exercising power and waging war. These perspectives are approached from the conflicting points of view of those using violence and the affected societies as well as their elites. Those involved in historiographic communication – that is, those who observe, judge and potentially direct these processes from the outside – are also analyzed. This thus raises the questions: Does this represent a return to distinctive patterns taken from the reservoir of classical heroic models as a response to contemporary challenges regarding the war-waging elite during this pivotal age in European history? And how should the simultaneous and contradicting tendencies of the transformation of a wild warrior into the figure of a demonized ruler and the brutalizing heroization of those using violence be placed in such an explanatory model?
Dissertation project A is concerned with the heroization processes and literary patterns that have been used to describe Norman rulers since their rise in southern Italian chronicles. This project also takes into account the special character of these texts as products of the complex multicultural background of southern Italy.
Dissertation project B addresses ideas of heroization in the context of the Holy Roman Empire’s military campaigns in Italy, the Third Crusade under Fredrick Barbarossa as well as Henry VI’s Staufian rule of Sicily, for which as of yet few sources, like epic texts, have been intensively researched or compared with thematically similar works of literature from the same time.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Stefan Tilg
Research associate: Dennis Pulina
Period: 2016-2020
From the writings of Homer to the early modern period, what society considers to be “heroic” has been characterized in European literature in the form of carmen heroicum epos. This project examines the burgeoning, but often neglected, tradition of Latin epos in the early modern period by analyzing the epic portrayal of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1459-1519).
This example lends itself to study for various reasons: Maximilian was not only an extraordinary figure of European history; he was also the focus of the discourse about heroes during his time. We only need to remember his collection of Middle High German epics in his Ambras Book of Heroes or his self-dramatization as a knightly hero in Theuerdank. Part of the larger discourse about heroes originates from the literary epics in Maximilian’s courtly milieu: for instance, R. Sbrulio adapted Theuerdank into Latin hexameter, G. S. Emiliano “Cimbriacus” wrote of Maximilian’s youth and early reign in Enconmiastica and R. Bartolini recounted the emperor’s role in the War of the Succession of Landshut in Austrias. Outside his court, parties that were hostile to Maximilian also penned epic texts such as S. Lemnius’s Raeteis, the modern Swiss national epic, as well as a number of short French epics. Because a few of the texts that are analyzed in this project also served as models for later epics north of the Alps, Maximilian can also be seen as model for epic heroes in general.
The texts selected for this project will be analyzed in various ways: as elements of an epic tradition that stretches back to antiquity, in the context of a political and literary propaganda war, and as a template for the heroization (and demonization) of a ruler. As a part of his dissertation project, Dennis Pulina is writing about the epic discourse surrounding Maximilian, while contextualizing his depiction with regard to a changing heroic model (such as those in tales about knights) and contemporary political ideologies. He also explores howheroism is constructed through epic narrative. Beyond this central theme, this project additionally analyzes the later reception of the Maximilian epics (for example in a number of further Austrias epics). Finally, a conference will be organized that will be devoted to the topic of the heroization of Maximilian in the literature and art of his time.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Anna Schreurs-Morét
Research associate: ennifer Krieger geb. Trauschke (in Elternzeit von 11/2018 bis 11/2019; Projektende: 08/2021)
Period: 2016-2020
The goal of this project is to demonstrate the guiding principles of grazia (grace) and terribilità (violence) in literature about art and (self-)portraits from 1500-1800, as well as theongoing effects thereof in the porwtrayal of the life of the artist. The relationship betweengrace and violence is also explained by exploring the functions and effects of this relationship, which is a common phenomenon of the heroic. By looking at the rich following of exceptional artists, a more precise description of the role of charisma for artists, art scholars and art commissioners can be developed. Works from the early modern period in which the artist represents himself as the hero David are an additional focus of this project.
Within the scope of literature about art, the term grazia (Italian for “charm,” “beauty” or “grace”) is understood as a gift or blessing, as something orderly and graceful, which leads to virtue and enlightenment. According to the understanding of this concept at the time, it is a characteristic that cannot be learned. According to Vasari, grazia – understood as the beauty of the soul – represents both an outstanding artist and his work (Feser, 2010). Conversely, since the time of Vasari, terribilità has been portrayed as a gift or blessing of disorder and energy, through which the observer is overwhelmingly captivated and even struck speechless. Despite their immense differences, both of these principles serve as points of departure for the particular characteristic of charisma that has been ascribed to artists since the 16th century, as seen in Vasari’s Le Vite. According to the interpretation of charisma as a gift from God (1 Corinthians 12:7) – thus directly reflecting the term grazia – these attributes successfully produce a certain heroizing function.
As terms with which the works of the most admirable artists have been described, grazia and terribilità also correspond to the artistic (self-)portraits that were produced from the 16thcentury on, in which the artist is presented as the hero David, who is both graceful andprepared to use violence. In this artistic (self-)portrayal, one can see a reaction to the heroization of the artist in literature about art through grazia and terribilità. This project focuses on the figure of David and how he represented a variety meaningful heroic models over several centuries. Another aspect of this research focuses on how representations of a victorious David negotiated questions about the making of art and the position of the artist in the early modern period.
An analysis of artists’ biographies, anecdotes and (self-)portraits in the early modern period in Italy as well as in countries north of the Alps will not only help to more closely define the artist’s charisma through grazia and/or terribilità, but also to trace the framing of charisma in relation to artists, art scholars and art commissioners through text and images. The dissertation that is being written alongside this project will additionally research narrative constructions in artists’ biographies as along with the literary strategies used in the heroization of artists.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Ronald G. Asch
Research associate: Kelly Minelli
Period: 2016-2020
This project researches the heroic models and forms of heroic (self-)representation of military officers in the period between the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars. Personal accounts of enlisted men and aristocratic officers are also analyzed. The main sources used in this project are autobiographies, memoirs and diaries, many of which were published by the authors or their families in the decades following their time of active duty. In order to discuss the how authors reinterpreted their war experiences by justifying themselves and making changes after the fact through the use of literary conventions, this analysis also examines war letters. The profound change not only in how wars were fought, but also in the use of force in this period led to a transformation of the heroic model. The image of the hero as an aristocratic officer in the time before 1790 changed profoundly during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, and even common soldiers were increasingly ascribed the ideal of heroic masculinity and were given the possibility to become heroes. This project poses the following questions: To what extent did the heroic models of officers and soldiers converge with one another? What were the similarities, differences or overlapping characteristics ofvarious heroic models, such as the aristocratic military leader, professional officer and “citizen” soldiers? How did the notions of honor that were primarily important for aristocratic officers before the Seven Years War develop into a contested symbol of regimental honor for regular enlisted men during the 18th century?
In exploring these question, this research focuses on the cultural transfer between Germany and France. The Seven Years War was the period during which the ideal of the Prussian drilled soldier “machines,” that signified military superiority emerged in Jena and Auerstedt. France’s citizen soldiers also became models for Prussia and other German territories. Finally, this research also explores possible differences in German and French personal accounts and the way new and changing heroic models of soldiers were received by both sides.
Working with the theory of the military historian Yuval Harari, this project will research how the authors addressed emotions and physical sensitivity in this transitional period of conceptualizing military heroism. It asks to what extent Harari’s theory applies to the increasing reliance on violent military experience as a part of the individual’s heroic self-discovery after 1750. Influenced by a culture of sensitivity and the notion of “sublime experience,” these authors also more strongly emphasize their sensitivity and physical reactions to their violent war experiences. This begs the question of how direct experiences with death and injury were processed in the context of war. Were the transgressive characteristics of heroic soldiers, which had been repressed since the Enlightenment, on the rise again after the 1790s, or had they become easier to describe again, if nothing else? This project will also research how the pain, fear, courage and zeal of war were portrayed, along with its meaning for the characterization and stylization of the heroic ideal.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Achim Aurnhammer
Research associates: Isabell Oberle, Dr. Nicolas Detering
Period: 2016-2020
This project focuses on the phenomenon of “heroic anticipation” in German literature in the first third of the 20th century. The idea of anticipation incorporates the heroization of waiting, perseverance and endurance and offers a prophetic model of heroic expectation and longing. Between 1900s and 1930s, anticipation redefined heroic characteristics as “internal” qualities– especially when regarding voluntary action and the Messianic evocation of the future as aheroic merit in a meaningless present. This project differentiates between various configurations of anticipation in German literature between 1900 and 1945. Messianic poetry, poetry from the front in the First World War, dramas from around 1920, essays critical of the culture of the Weimar Republic as well as scenes of waiting in exile and in Nazi Germany all serve as examples for this study, which focuses on the three following aspects.
First, this project discusses how “heroic agency” is ascribed as a prerequisite in the construction of heroes. Further analysis explores competing concepts of “anticipative agency”(i.e. how the ability to act heroically relates to waiting and how this represents an alternative model of the heroic) in which a figure’s lack of scope of action constitutes their heroic behavior. In addition to the victimization of the martyr-hero, which has been placed in opposition to the hero of action since antiquity, the heroization of “holding one’s ground” has also emerged as just such heroic model with limited agency.
Secondly, this project analyzes figurations of anticipative agency through the lens of heroic temporality. In literary waiting scenes, the relationship between the experience of time and historical meaning is thus a central theme. This focus includes spatial and temporal metaphors (“maturation period,” “waiting lounge,” “levee”) that become linked in literature to the portrayal of situational waiting, which historical philosophy has diagnosed as a Conditio humana moderna, as well as narrative strategies for stretching time with which authors distinguished their style from the dynamic patterns of narration of the 19th century.
The third aspect concerns aspects heroic temporality: What literary forms successfully distinguish the heroic as a medium for reflecting on the present? Anticipative literature no longer only presented the hero, but also discursively reflected heroic qualities. Prophetic texts in particular oscillated between pre-figuration and projection, between references to heroic paradigms (Alexander the Great, Christ, Napoleon) and the establishment of newer, more contemporary characteristics of what will come. In what way did the evocation of earlier heroic models, whose return is expected, contribute to the stabilization or destabilization of contemporary political leaders? The relationship between role model and ideal touches on historical philosophical premises (cyclic, theological or typological understandings of history), according to which forms and tendencies of heroic anticipation can be heuristically logically ordered. How are the present and the future, experience and expectation, structurally related to one another?
The research associate of the project will address these questions in a book on heroic anticipation in German literature between 1900 and 1945, and the project leader will write a number of smaller studies on a range of themes, including the continuity of heroic anticipation strategies in Stefan George’s work, the reception of George’s poetry during National Socialism and figures of messianic fulfillment in National Socialist literature.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Jörn Leonhard
Research associate: Stefan Schubert
Period: 2016-2020
The empty battlefields, the anonymous deaths from artillery fire or mine explosions, the total war, the millions of war victims – the First World War questioned traditional interpretations of heroic, man-on-man combat. New heroic models based on the democratization of the heroic victim emerged, the iconic portrayal of which is that of the Unknown Soldier. At the same time, new models of leaders who seemed to personify the demands of this new age of war while also following their own political ambitions came into play: Paul von Hindenburg, Philippe Pétain, Józef Piłsudski, Benito Mussolini, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Chiang Kai-shek, to name a few. The monarch as a traditional symbol of identification lost its iconic power. These new “national saviors” were able to profit from a continually expandingpropaganda machine that fundamentally changed the conditions of mass communication in warring societies. The manipulation of public opinion was thus tested to its limits toward the end of the war. However, this still played a part in the construction of specific heroic narratives that influenced the interwar era and without them, the implementation of totalitarian models could not be properly understood.
Against this backdrop, this project explores the how military heroism and political legitimation were related in this era of ideological extremes, as well as the manner in which the subsequent relationship between heroes of war and the peacetime of the post-war years was constructed. The relationship between heroization during the war and the translation of this exceptional reputational capital into a political office in times of political and societal crisis is shown in the cases of Paul von Hindenburg in Germany and Phillip Pétain in France. Based on this perspective on these two generals of the First World War, the connection between internal and external processes of heroization is analyzed, along with the role of modern mass media (radio, film, election posters, propaganda campaigns) as well as the historical-political engineering of these heroic figures in these processes. One such analysis of heroization processes will focus on the conditions of stability and instability in post-war societies that bestow the highest political office on their national saviors.
The dissertation being written as part of this project concerns these two figures, which have rarely been directly compared, despite their evident similarities – a traditional military career, experience in the First World War and the transition from military national savior to occupant of the highest political office. This analysis is expected to provide transnational perspectives on the heroization processes that took place under very specific conditions as well as the connection between war-time charisma and political power in the ideologically-charged inter-war period.
Principal investigators: Prof. Dr. Dietmar Neutatz, Prof. Dr. Nicola Spakowski
Research associates: Irina Tibilova, Alexander Schröder
Period: 2016-2020
This project researches heroic working-class figures in China and Russia between 1920 and 1960, placing them in the context of the global-historical heroization of labor. An interdisciplinary team of historians and Chinese Studies researchers apply comparative research methods to examine the heroization of labor in national and culture-specific communist contexts. This project places its “socialist heroes” in a broader framework and investigates the relationship between the heroization of labor and its portrayal as a national struggle. The heroization of labor itself is regarded as a response to the challenges of modern life and as an important part of an anti-capitalist model of society.
The figure of the working hero is formulated as transcending the cultural and political realmand has been found not only in communist, fascist and national socialist movements but also in social democratic and conservative revolutions and during the New Deal in the United States. This figure of the working hero similarly overlaps with discourses across political camps and countries concerning the “modern man.” The emotional – and almost mystical – presentation of the worker who has been made virtually anonymous in the process of industrialization and almost completely functionalized can be interpreted as a reaction to modern industrialized society, which is defined by making everything more mechanical, economic, rational and anonymous.
Two particular manifestations of this phenomenon are being researched in separate sub-projects. As part of her dissertation, the historian Irina Tibilova (History) is researching the “Heroization and Militarization of Labor in the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the Early 1960s” (“Heroisierung und Militarisierung von Arbeit in der Sowjetunion von den 1920er bis Anfang der 1960er Jahre”). Alexander Schröder (Chinese Studies) is similarly concerned with “Working Heroes in the Changing Context of Chinese Socialism from the Late 1920s to ca. 1960” (“Arbeitsheld/inn/en in wechselnden Kontexten des chinesischen Sozialismus von den späten 1920er Jahren bis ca. 1960”).
The research results of the project leaders will additionally enable these findings to be further contextualized and correlated with each other. In this way, the team is able to analyze the cross-border dimensions and effects of changes and transfer between the figuration and the social practice of working heroes in the Soviet Union and China.
These nations were selected based on their different socio-economic stages of development and the perspectives resulting from these. In opposition to Western industrialized nations, modern industrialized society was not yet implemented at this time in the Soviet Union and China, and both countries shaped their opinion of agricultural and industrial work in varying fashions on a regional level.
The main points of investigation in this project include: 1) The origins of the heroization of labor, the appropriation of older and contemporary discourses associated with this in the early Soviet Union, and the transfer processes between the Soviet Union and China; 2) medialization and figuration (ascription of characteristics, body image and gender roles to working heroes as well as fictional and utopian projections); 3) function, social reach and social practice in the heroization of labor; 4) the role of the political system (specific features of the heroization of labor in the presence and absence of a totalitarian system).
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Andreas Gelz
Research associate: Claudia Müller
Period: 2016-2020
Since the 20thth century, athletics have become an important domain of the heroic in modern society. Sports have produced heroes whose societal importance can be demonstrated through their portrayal in literature. The goal of this project is to describe the portrayal of heroic patterns in Francophone narratives from the interwar period to the 21st century. Theheroically characterized self-portrayal of athletes, which is often found in texts, as well as society’s ascription or functionalization of the athlete-hero represent two essential focuses of research: the significance of the relationship between a programmatic universalism of athletics that was especially present in the first half of the 20th century and the internationalization and globalization thereof in the second half of the century. Using this as a starting point, this project takes a metatextual and self-reflexive approach to the relation between literature and athletics that is geared toward the renewal of the literary language of form and the exploration of the linguistic remnants of heroic manners of expression thatremain to this day. Within the scope of their research, this project group will analyze athletics as boundary work: as an action that allows for transcending natural – and in this case, bodily – borders, and for aestheticizing one’s own existence while performing and experiencing a sensual presence. In the research of the heroic, these constituent factors are analyzed and influenced by relevant literature. The athlete as a hero, athletics as a heroic action and sports complexes as the domain of the heroic are discussed in these texts as a figure, realm and place of projection in which people can confront their own experience. What had begun in France by the 1920s has since become a worldwide and differentiated phenomenon that affects both popular and high literature. This project attempts to explain these varying aspects in two sub-projects. One dissertation is devoted to France in the post-war period and thus the beginning of an intense literary occupation with athletics, while another study is exploring the obviousrenewed interest in athletics in contemporary French literature.
Principal investigator: Prof. (apl.) Dr. Cornelia Brink
Research associate: Vera Marstaller
Period: 2016-2020
Since the 1930s, war photographers (who were more often male than female) have been portrayed as a new model of a heroic warrior. In a combat setting, the act of taking photos can be heroic, and the photographer can be reconstructed as a hero who transcends borders. The war photographer works in the grey area between reporting and fighting and is (purportedly) ready to put their life on the line for a “good” photograph. Furthermore, their proximity to troops allows their work to overcome the distance between the front and the homeland. War photographers present images of heroes and heroic actions in magazines and photobooks(with the potential to “make heroes” out of their subjects) to a wide audience while conveying heroic ideals and deeds.
This project analyzes the heroic model of war photographers that emerged in the Second World War and is located at the intersection between politics and the media, between the military and omnipresent, organized violence. The accompanying dissertation project focuses on how photographers of the Propagandakompanien (war photography units in the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS) presented their images in a heroic style. Whether heroes are always heroes for others, whether they are in demand, whether systems of order and value erode and antisemitism and racism are legitimized for eliminating "enemies of the people," an analysis of photographs and the reconstruction of the premises for their creation can help to answer the question of why the type of heroization they produce is needed. What interests and goals do these war photographers and their heroic images promise to achieve for those who look at their pictures and react to them by writing captions and comments before their dissemination? What specific experiences of time become recognizable when these heroic photographs are understood as an effect of projection and identification?
In the course of this project, the project leader will write a book that will expand the investigation period to include the 1970s. This diachronic perspective will serve as a method with which to analytically explain the transformation of the war photographer from a solider-photographer to a photographer who aims to enlighten viewers in the service of truth and humanity. In what ways does this theory demonstrate a break with past trends as well as a continuation thereof? Where do German war photographers place themselves in the years following 1945 in relation to (critical) journalism and military tradition? How are they viewed by others? And regarding their power to make heroes, how were old photographs released before the end of the war contextualized after 1945? What new motifs relating to heroes and heroic action can be found in war photojournalism since 1945?
This project analyzes the use of the media as a constituent element in heroization. From the 1930s to the early 1970s, photography was an important visual medium through which war was transformed from an act of society to a notion held by society in a continuous feedback loop. This analysis aims to characterize the war photographer as a model and facilitator of the heroic while also further determining specific characteristics of the visual patterns of heroization in dictatorial and democratic societies. Finally, the dissertation project will conduct a synchronic and comparative study of illustrated war reports in Germany and the United Kingdom. As a continuation of the research analyzing war photographers as heroes and hero-makers in the Second World War, the project leader promises to shed light in her forthcoming book on the ways in which the photography of the Propagandakompanien was both an exception and a model of war photography.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Joachim Grage
Research associate: Sotirios Kimon Mouzakis
Period: 2016-2020
Welfare states in continental Scandinavia were established in the second half of the 20thcentury in order to avoid extreme situations on the personal level through precautionary measures and also to make excessive actions of individuals unnecessary by means of communal solidarity. Nevertheless, heroic figures and heroic behavioral patterns are ubiquitous in the literature and cultures of postheroic Scandinavian societies. Especially in realistic young adult literature which – similar to children’s literature after 1945 – has been largely detached from moral teachings and gender-specific roles alongside personal autonomy, there is a certain tension that has developed between the reality of living in a welfare state and the heroic as well as between the creation of social boundaries and individual breaking of these rules. This project aims to show how heroism has been prohibited and sanctioned in society (e.g. Peter Pohl, Janne, min vän, 1985); while in other texts, the welfare state has become a danger for the protagonist, from which one can only be freed through heroic action (e.g. Mikael Engström, Isdraken, 2007). These texts also mirror societal changes such as cultural hybridization through immigration, the changing of gender roles, a growing acceptance of homosexuality or the eroding of societal solidarity in the course of crises affecting the welfare state. At the same time, these texts take part in these changes which they narratively form, encode into societal discourse and about whose possibilities and boundaries involving individual actions they discuss in the frame of the heroic.
The dissertation project looks into the time frame from 1985 to the present. Beginning with the crisis of the welfare state, the challenges brought about by societal changes are researched using relevant young adult literature.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Bröckling
Research associates: Dr. Tobias Schlechtriemen, Dr. Christian Dries
Period: 2016-2020
This project researches sociological diagnoses of the time between the First World War and the present with regard to the relationship between post-heroic orientation and heroic conceptions of the individual. This project pays special attention to the emblematic figures that are invoked in diagnoses of the present. Elementary social experiences and expectationsare figuratively concentrated not only in the heroically-charged models of the “boss” and the “worker,” in such deheroized or aheroic temporal forms like “employee” or “The Organization Man,” but also in groups of collective individuals like “The Lonely Crowd” or the “generation of sceptics.” This historically comparative analysis of social figures in diagnoses of the times will explain the contradictory problematization and replacement of the heroic in the 20th and 21st centuries. This analysis also investigates the role of the individual in society as well as socially relevant values and norms.
In the first sub-project of this study, defining social figures who appear in sociological diagnoses of the present are scrutinized. Central questions are: What characteristics distinguish the genre of sociological diagnoses of the present? What social figures appear at what time, and what social experiences do they articulate? Are these figures marked by gender, and what gender roles do they embody? Have they been heroized or do they have aheroic traits, and how can their relationship to society at large be described? Looking further into this relationship, the question is raised whether there are trends of heroization and deheroization in historical comparison. Do individual social figures have historical predecessors to whom they can relate, or antitypes from whom they differentiate themselves? What similarities and differences exist in the comparison of German and French or American diagnoses of the same time period? What rhetorical and narrative elements are found in diagnoses of the time? In what ways is sociological evidence generated about type identifications and personal figurations in relation to the diagnosis of a certain time?
A further line of discourse is characterized by debates surrounding “post-heroic societies.”These debates were initially related to questions of military preparedness and management and have since been generalized to diagnoses of the times. In a further sub-project, various diagnoses of the post-heroic since the 1980s are reconstructed using discourse analytic methods, in which their collective problems are presented in detail while juxtaposing them with contemporary interpretations that contrast with new heroic trends and characteristics.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Magnus Striet
Research associate: Benjamin Dober
Period: 2016-2020
The goal of this project is to analyze Hans Blumberg’s interdisciplinary approach to mythology in order to better describe the formation and dynamism of heroization. This approach benefits all areas of the SFB 948. This project analyzes Blumberg’s mythological theory in the context of his phenomenological anthropology with a particular focus on heroes. Blumberg’s on will also serve as a starting point in the analysis of divergent human figurations, particularly in the heroic mythology of the 19th and 20th centuries. The history of theology and philosophy offers perspectives that are always linked with issues of anthropology and ethics. The practical applications of this interdisciplinary research will provide the structure for an accompanying dissertation project in which Blumberg’s central anthropological category of “consolation” is used as a method for systematically and critically analyzing his work. This framework can be applied in terms of reflexivity to the field of medical ethics. The dissertation project is titled “Ethik des Trostes – Eine Untersuchung zu den praktischen Potentialen in der Philosophie Hans Blumenbergs” (“The Ethics of Consolation: An Analysis of Practical Applications in Hans Blumberg’s Philosophical Works”).
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Johanna Pink
Research associate: Dr. Olmo Gölz
Period: 2016-2020
This project addresses the evaluation of heroization strategies in violent conflicts in the Middle East since the 1970s. That state and non-state actors use a large repertoire of heroic figures and heroization mechanisms for mobilization in revolutionary contexts, conflicts and wars serves as the analytic starting point of this research. This heroically-charged discourse serves to legitimize or delegitimize the use of violence. It propagates idealized models of soldiers and calls for heroic martyrs. This rhetoric has helped to establish the stereotypical perception of “suicide assassins” and “Islamic fighters” in the Middle East as well as in Europe. This project concentrates on the time between the late 1970s and early 1990s, when it is assumed that the ideological, religious and political conflicts and actors in the Middle East contributed to the emergence of heroic and demonized or anti-heroic stereotypes.
The project furthermore aims to examine the underlying historical processes of relationships of exchange between opposing parties while also analyzing heroization and demonization processes. In this way, this research not only contributes to a better understanding of the mechanisms of the active production of heroes and types of heroism in one specific place and time; it also seeks to formulate a theoretical framework that allows the heroic to be used as an instrument of analysis in the evaluation of the relationship between conflicting parties. Moreover, the project aims to investigate the recent ideological, social and medial history of the region, which has not been previously explored in depth, while also historically delving into contemporary discussions of jihadism and martyrdom. It is assumed that, during the time in question, assessments can be made about how discourse formations were implemented in the medial analysis of the production of heroes, something which has shaped the Middle East since the turn of the millennium and has become increasingly reactivated in contemporary conflicts.
The postdoctoral thesis accompanying this project furthermore examines the dynamics of heroization in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), consolidating the systems of heroization processes on the level of official-ideological discourse. The central thesis of this work is that the analysis of the heroic in the case of the Iran-Iraq War and the discourse embedded in it is paradigmatically adequate for characterizing the political systems that have emerged in both states.
Principal investigators: Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte, PD Dr. Nicole Falkenhayner
Research associates: Maria Xenia Hardt
Period: 2016-2020
Interpretations of the heroic are significantly influenced and negotiated by popular media. This British Studies project applies this thesis to an analysis of British television. The focus of this project is an analysis of the 21st century – the increase in security threats post-9/11 andthe subsequent needs for national security, all of which appear to have changed the “post-heroic” orientation of the late 20th century. The goal of this project is to better identify and define the heterogeneity found in the ways figurative and semantic characteristics of heroism are shaped in British society through television. In this medium, heroization becomes intertwined with social discourse and specific medial and aesthetic strategies. Fictional television series thus offer particularly productive material, as they not only depict heroic figures, narration and concepts through various symbolic systems and codes; they also displaythese continuously and prominently. Television series allow heroically conceived figures to develop and audiences become acquainted with them over a longer period of time, while also ambivalently and critically illuminating characters’ actions and ethical nature.
This project includes two sub-projects: a) One sub-project relies on a corpus of popular British series from the 21st century to characterize and analyze the figuration and semantic configuration of heroism in British society; b) in another sub-project, a corresponding dissertation will further research changes in figuration since the 1960s, using the example of Doctor Who. An additional focus here will be on the interpretation of the multi-modal series episodes themselves while questioning cultural-discursive and formal-aesthetic aspects of heroization.
In addition to presenting these research results in a national and international context, this project will also result in two books. The first (Korte & Falkenhayner) will research a wide variety of fictional series produced between 2002 and 2015, during which a new-found intensity and quality in the analysis of heroism emerged – particularly in reference to the intertwining nature of Islamic terrorism and war in multi-ethnic British society, as well as contemporary debates about British identity. The second (Hardt) is a dissertation project that will complement this contemporary interpretation by analyzing the series Doctor Who from the 1960s to the present and its relationship to heroic figurations in social and cultural contexts in Great Britain.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Tim Epkenhans
Research associate: Sarah Stegemann
Period: 2016-2020
The project aims to analyse semantic change in the discourse surrounding prefigurative heroes and heroized historical personnages in official Iranian historiography of the Pahlavi state (1925–1979) and the Islamic Republic (1979–present). In modern Iran, heroic figures such as Rustam (mythology), Cyros II (pre-Islamic history) and al-Husain (Shiite tradition) represent these prefigurations that rely on different parts of the collective memory. Analysing official historiography makes it possible to reconstruct semantics that are connected to these heroic figures, in order to contextualize them within broader aspects of politics and society. Historiography as part of the wider field of the politics of history and culture are highly relevant and instrumental for the construction of an authoritative narrative on the genesis of the Iranian nation and nation state. Both the Pahlavi administration and the political elites of the Islamic Republic of Iran deployed historiography as a tool of legitimation used to form and confirm ideas of social and political order, social hierarchy and collective identity. The construction of heroes and narratives of heroization as well as gender discourse are of central relevance to official historiography. While exceptional historical players are constructed in social praxis as heroes and thus deployed as exemplary role models, heroisms provide information on hegemonic concepts of morality, social order and gender configuration as much as collective identity. Therefore, the core of this analysis is formed by strategies of heroization in the context of political legitimization and social transformation. The constitutive elements of official historiography hint at configurations of hegemonic masculinity that provide collective identity and reflect the self-perception of the male-dominated political systems of both Pahlavi and Republican Iran. In the process, ambiguities of discourse on heroized historical characters and prefigurations refer on the dialectic of social transgression and conformity.
Prof. Dr. Ronald G. Asch
Prof. Dr. Achim Aurnhammer
Prof. Dr. Anna Schreurs-Morét
Georg Feitscher
Jens Schneider
Laura Soldo
This project unites all the research results from the various projects and funding periods of the SFB 948. All SFB researchers will collaborate to develop an online compendium of detailed but comparatively short encyclopedic entries on various subjects. After this is completed, the project will turn to the production of a handbook titled »Helden – Heroisierungen – Heroismen« (“Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms”), which will contain summaries of research results in the form of detailed essays. Together, this online compendium and complementary handbook will provide information and analyses of the social significance, semantics and mediality of the heroic, from antiquity to the 21st century. These resources will also offer multi-disciplinary perspectives, define the meaning of heroic figures in society and demonstrate in what ways a heroic habitus affects the identity of a specific group, community or society as a whole. This project will focus specifically on enhancing the visibility of the research activities of the SFB 948 as well as on guaranteeing access to these materials for future use.
The encyclopedic entries in the online compendium will cover heroic themes relating to the team’s ongoing collaborative research. These will include entries about the themes ofheroization (the heroic act, becoming charismatic, deheroization), models of heroism and their specific characteristics (war hero, everyday hero, national hero, military hero) and heroization (imitatio heroica, community admiration, imitation). Although the essays in the handbook will be based on the compendium, they will provide additional insights, such assource or research-based case studies and specific research objectives, while also offering a discursive frame of reference for describing specific aspects that are important forunderstanding each historical period being studied.
The production and publication of this project are an example of the digital humanities. Authors predominantly from the SFB who represent various fields of study will collaborate to produce the compendium entries and handbook essays, reflecting a variety of discursive perspectives. Collaborative tools will also be at hand to facilitate team-oriented discussion, comments and revisions. The format of this project means that the compendium entries willbe published on an online platform, where they can be continually edited, thus making research in the SFB open and transparent as a work in progress. The discursive summaries in essay form, on the other hand, will published both electronically as well as in print in order toallow for more comfortable reading of the longer texts.
Integrated Research Training Group (IGK) 2016-2020
The Integrated Research Training Group (Integrierte Graduiertenkolleg - IGK) will make a key contribution to the optimal academic qualification of the SFB's doctoral candidates. It is tailored to the specific needs and interests of doctoral candidates: with regard to their research, continuing education, and career planning. The structured qualification programme (compact colloquia, workshops, a summer school) leaves the doctoral candidates ample time for their research and can accommodate various academic cultures as well as individual planning (research trips, additional offers according to need).
Members
Sebastian Bauer (Project D1, History)
Matthias Bensch (Project D1, Classical Archaeology)
Benjamin Dober (Project D13, Theology)
Maria-Xenia Hardt (Project D15, English Studies)
Vera Marstaller (Project D10, History)
Kelly Minelli (Project D5, History)
Claudia Müller (Project D9, Romance Studies)
Thomas Nitschke (Project D2, Historical Studies)
Sotirios-Kimon Mouzakis (Project D11, Scandinavian Studies)
Isabell Oberle (Project D6, German Studies)
Dennis Pulina (Project D3, Latin Philology)
Stefan Schubert (Project D7, History)
Alexander Schröder (Project D8, Sinology)
Sarah Stegemann (Project D16, Islamic Studies)
Irina Tibilova (Project D8, History)
Jennifer Trauschke (Project D4, Art History)
Thilo Treß (Project D2, History)
Dr Olmo Gölz (Project D14, Islamic Studies)
Dr Nina Niedermeier (Project D4, Art History)
Dr Tobias Schlechtriemen (Project D12, Sociology)
Alexandre Bischofberger (History, University of Constance)
Anna Bertelli (Classical Archaeology, University of Padua)
Stefan Trajković Filipović (History, University of Giessen)
Verena Gold (Modern German Literature, University of Regensburg)
Christina Heiduck (Modern and Contemporary History, University of Jena)
Daniel Koch (German Linguistics, University of Kassel)
Konstantin Maier (Medieval History, University of Münster)
Sabrina Marquardt (German Linguistics, University of Düsseldorf)
Özlem Sarica (English Studies, University of Freiburg)
Inka Sauter (History and Philosophy, Simon Dubnow Institute Leipzig)
Wilma Scheschonk (Art History, Central Institute for Art History, Munich)
Eleonora Sereni (English Studies, University of Freiburg)
Sarah Stegemann (Islamic Studies, University of Freiburg)
Leo Vössing (History, University of Freiburg)
Mirjam Döpfert (German Studies, University of Freiburg)
Fiona Fritz (History, University of Kiel)
Felix W. Günther (History, University of Freiburg)
Andreas Haller (Literary Studies, University of Bonn)
Svenja Hohenstein (American Studies, University of Tübingen)
Kristina Sperlich (English Studies, University of Freiburg)
Friederike Richter (Scandinavian Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Fellow of the IGK
Antonia Rüth (Archaeology, University of Freiburg) Fellow of the IGK
Funding Period 3
Projects
This project aims to understand the role of the heroic in periods of upheaval and disruption by synthesizing and reassessing the results of the SFB. Three types of upheaval and disruption will be explored: political and religious transformation, periods of war, and spatial reconstellations. Various forms of reinterpreting mytho-historical pasts in which heroes were active, or their agency was prefigured, will be investigated in this context, given the distinctive temporal structures of the heroic.
Principal investigators: Prof. Dr. Jürgen Dendorfer, Prof. Dr. Peter Eich, Prof. Dr. Tim Epkenhans, Prof. Dr. Dietmar Neutatz, Prof. Dr. Johanna Pink, Prof. Dr. Sitta von Reden
Research associate: PD Dr. Georg Eckert, Elena Fellner
Period: 2020-2024
Authority is attributed to heroines and heroes because (and provided that) they are followed and looked up to. At the same time, heroes provide models for self-description, self-fashioning and action-orientation; in this sense, they subjectify. This project combines insights into ideas about the heroic subject and insights into heroes as figures of authority, and delineates general characteristics of invocations of the heroic subject. Moreover, this project uses these insights to better understand how personal authority relationships arise, are maintained or eroded, and what effects of subjectification they produce. This project focuses on the period between the 19th and the 21st century.
Principal investigators: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Broeckling, Prof. Dr. Andreas Urs Sommer, Prof. Dr. Nicola Spakowski, Prof. Dr. Magnus Striet
Research associates: Clara Arnold, Dr. Dorna Safaian
Period: 2020-2024
This project investigates masculinity as a fundamental category of the heroic and thus contributes to critical masculinity studies within the wider field of gender research. As the SFB's previous research has shown, it is men that are predominantly worshipped as heroes. Simultaneously, the heroization of men conveys ideal masculinities, around which both men and women are forced to position themselves. In this project, culturally and historically varying masculinities will be analyzed and compared from the perspectives of the studies of Islam, history, visual arts, literature and culture.
Principal investigators: Prof. (apl.) Dr. Cornelia Brink, Dr. Olmo Gölz, Prof. Dr. Joachim Grage, Dr. Andreas Plackinger
Research associates: Rebecca Heinrich, Vera Marstaller
Period: 2020-2024
This project continues the work of the first two funding periods of the SFB, taking up and intensifying the research on the depictions of heroic figures and their strongly affective appeal. The “Aesthetics of Affect” explores the interplay of aesthetic arrangements of the heroic and social formations in order to understand their role in the negotiation and (re)shaping of social relations from antiquity to the present day.
Principal investigators: Prof. Dr. Andreas Gelz, Prof. Dr. Barbara Korte, Prof. (apl.) Dr. Stefanie Lethbridge, Dr. Tobias Schlechtriemen, Prof. Dr. Stefan Tilg, Prof. Dr. Ralf von den Hoff
Research associates: Morten Grage, Dr. Anne Hemkendreis
Period: 2020-2024
The online encyclopedia “Compendium heroicum” brings together research results of the SFB. This project thus analyzes and informs about the social meaning, semantics and mediality of the heroic from antiquity to the twenty-first century, while also extensively contributing to the question of the meaning that heroic figures have for a society. The Compendium heroicum will be completed during the funding period to become a comprehensive work of reference for the study of heroization processes. This project cooperates with the Free University of Berlin’s “Open Encyclopedia System” project.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Anna Schreurs-Morét, Prof. Dr. Ralf von den Hoff
Research associate: Dr. Georg Feitscher, Olivia Schmidt-Thomée
Period: 2020-2024
Principal investigator: Dr. Antje Kellersohn, Prof. Dr. Franz Leithold (until summer 2023), Oliver Rau (from summer 2023)
Research associate: Elke Möller, Elena Wiener, Rainer Rombach, Laure Kervyn, Paula Schulze
Period: 2020-2024
Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hochbruck
Research associate: Kristina Seefeldt
Period: 2020-2024
This project takes its starting point from the ongoing, increasing social relevance and prevalence of the SFB’s topic “Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms”. Public visibility has been important to the SFB since its first funding period; now, the SFB is tapping into the possibilities of museums and exhibitions as places of knowledge transfer and testing grounds for its research. T is developing an exhibition for the research at the SFB, a process that complements the third funding period’s focus on academic syntheses and new perspectives. The exhibition is being developed in cooperation with the Zentrum für Militärgeschichte und Sozialwissenschaften der Bundeswehr (Bundeswehr Centre of Military History and Social Sciences in Potsdam, ZMSBw), whose Museums of Military History (MHM) have distinguished themselves through their innovative exhibitions, cultural-historical perspectives, and good public visibility (for example, the exhibition “Gewalt und Geschlecht. Männlicher Krieg – Weiblicher Frieden?” [Gender and Violence: War is for Men – Peace is for Women?], 2018: MHM Dresden).
The MHM at Berlin-Gatow airfield, the largest museum in Berlin in terms of area, will be the venue for the SFB’s exhibition, which is due to open in the late summer of 2023. The results from all three funding periods will be translated into an original exhibition concept in partnership with the ZMSBw, thereby generating new perspectives on the SFB’s research. As there is a persistent connection between the heroic and the military sphere, the MHM is a natural home for this exhibition, which will explore and critically evaluate this interdependence as one aspect of the diverse phenomena of the heroic. With its state-of-the-art, multimedia exhibition, T will present controversial debates on heroes, based on the SFB’s research results, in order to demonstrate how cultural studies and history contribute to topical questions of the past and present. The exibition will achieve three important goals. Firstly, by experiencing the immersive exhibition, visitors can perceive, understand and critically evaluate the field of the heroic. They will be able to explore the relationships between the objects and themes, as well as relate them back to their own experiences. Secondly, the presentation of research in an exhibition setting will aid the re-evaluation and synthesis of the SFB’s results. Thirdly, the exhibition will become a hub, as new knowledge will emerge in the conceptual work and in the exchange with the public, and can thus have an impact back on the university research of the SFB. Through this process, the SFB’s research will integrate input from the audience’s involvement in the interactive exhibition.
Principal investigator: Dr. Gorch Pieken, Prof. Dr. Ralf von den Hoff
Research associate: Katja Widmann, Andreas Geißler
Period: 2020-2024