Visualizing the Past: The Power of the Image in German Historicism

Description

Visual media had a decisive impact on how the past was perceived in historicist culture in nineteenth-century Germany. The panorama, photography, and book illustrations can portray the past under the auspices of spatiality. Research on historicist culture often neglects this dimension of space and concentrates on traditional historicist paradigms, such as temporality, narrative, and teleology. By investigating the visual vocabulary of different historicist genres (academic historiography, illustrated history books, historical maps), this volume expands an understanding of German historicist culture as a multi-medial phenomenon, and shows that past is conveyed in spatial forms, such as travel locations, national and colonial spaces, as well as geographical areas. Tracing these concepts of historical space, this volume demonstrates that the image works as a powerful tool to propagate the ideology of German imperialism in the nineteenth-century, but also can critically reflect the political agendas of national historicism. Introduction Visual Culture The Rise of German Historicism Historicism as an Academic Discipline Aesthetic Historicism Historicism as a Cultural Phenomenon Narrative and the Poetics of History Visual Historicism Spatial Configurations Part I: Leopold von Ranke and the Panorama Historical Ocularism The Panorama as a Mass Medium The Panoramic Eye of the Historian Omniscient Writing Visual Reality Effects The Aesthetics of the Picturesque Tourism and Travel Literature Ida von Hahn-Hahn’s Literary Travelogues The Oriental Panorama The Colonial Panorama Historical Landscapes — 61 Alpinism The Mountain Panorama Historical Environmentalism Ranke and the Panorama: Concluding Remarks Part II: Jacob Burckhardt and Photography Jacob Burckhardt’s Photo Collection Photograph Shopping Tours The Photo Collection Mapping the Past Typology Serialisation The Picture Atlas The Photographic Gaze in Jacob Burckhardt’s Cicerone (1855) Roland Barthes’s Theory of Photography Adalbert Stifter’s Photographic Aesthetics Living Monuments Photography as Cultural Memory Part III: Illustrated History Books Franz Kugler and Adolph Menzel’s History of Frederick the Great (1842) Wood Engraving: The Revolution for Text and Image Bourgeois Spacializing Geographical Space and Landscape Illustrating Prussian and Colonial History Handbooks of Prussian History Editions de Luxe: Museums of the Past Illustrated Books on Colonial History Samoa: Images of the Exotic “Other” Part IV: Historical Cartography Mapping Europe Cartography and Construction Historical Mapping Christian Kruse’s Historical Atlas: Bird’s Eye Views on History Text and Image Relationships Historical School-Atlases Mapping Prussia for School Children F. W. Putzger’s School-Atlas The Construction of National Unity Historical Cartography of Imperialism and Colonialism Gustav Droysen’s Atlas of Military History Mapping Wars Geopolitics Colonial Historical Maps Territorial Expansion Conclusion List of Illustrations Bibliography Index of Names