The article examines regulations for »order« at the princely courts in the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th century and asks how these prescriptive documents sought to establish “good order” at court. Special attention is paid to the theological justifications of order as well as the confessionality and the confessional character of court orders. T…[Read more]

After the Seven Years War German petty courts increasingly felt obliged to justify their very existence. Therefor members of the reigning dynasties developped strategies to represent themselves as ›enlightened‹ rulers. Especially for non-reigning princesses, practice and patronage of the fine arts – theatre, music, landscape gardening, liter…[Read more]

Freemasonry has traditionally been seen as a key influence in the rise of the Bourgeoisie, since it allegedly subdued social boundaries and behavioural norms of the Ancien Régime. This paper, however, argues that the masonic lodges at least in the smaller German court towns, adopted various elements of court society – organizational structures, my…[Read more]

Notas tomadas en la Jornada de la Obra Social de IberCaja en colaboración con el Instituto Francés, “Darwin: Del Big Bang al Hombre (2013); organizadas simultáneamente en la sede de IberCaja en Zaragoza, y en el ayuntamiento de Brive (Francia). Las ponencias de la primera parte de la jornada versan sobre el contexto histórico y científico de Char…[Read more]

The idea of the North in Western society has a long and distinguished history. Indeed, the only ‘purely ethnographic treatise that survives from antiquity’ is Tacitus’s Germania, his description of the Germanic peoples (Mellor 1993: 14). Tacitus produced his short treatise as a way of forcing Romans to confront the luxurious decadence that he fe…[Read more]

The metatheatricality of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has invited recent directors to tell particular kinds of socially progressive stories. This article uses the notion of “social reparation” to theorize remedial uses of Shakespeare in adaptations that give artists and audiences more moral agency. By imagining more inclusive local habitations and s…[Read more]

Im Jahr 2002 kam die fast verzweifelte Suche nach Beethovens verschollenem Oboenkonzert zu einem vorläufigen Ende, weil die Forschung an dieser Stelle nicht weiterkam. Jetzt habe ich neue Hinweise auf das autographe Dokument gefunden – und auch auf Mozarts verschollenes Oboenkonzert sowie auf eine unbekannte Oper von Joseph Haydn. Es ist kein Zu…[Read more]

In 2002 the research for Beethoven’s lost oboe concerto came to a temporary end. Now I’ve found new leads to the autograph manuscript – and to Mozart’s lost oboe concerto, too, and to a lost opera of Joseph Haydn. It is no coincidence that all autograph manuscripts are missing at the same time: They were together and possibly are, played in a c…[Read more]

Heracles/Hercules is a particularly striking example of how European societies have received, appropriated and reshaped classical heroic myths into the early 21st century. Is the ancient hero thus also a European site of memory? It will be shown that it was a specific aspect of the myth that was evoked particularly frequently and became a topos by…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Un comentario sobre algunas de las implicaciones de un llamativo “escándalo silencioso” en la vida pública española, el llamado “Expediente Royuela”. Se trata de una marea de crimen, corrupción y asesinato que implica a muchas de las instituciones judiciales y políticas españolas, y muy especialmente al Partido Socialista que a…[Read more]

The rise of global Shakespeare as an industry and cultural practice—the incorporation of Shakespearean performance in cultural diplomacy and in the cultural marketplace—is aided by digital tools of dissemination and digital forms of artistic expression. Shakespeare has evolved from a cultural nomad in the past centuries—a body of works with no pe…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Unas notas sobre el final del libro ‘El lugar del hombre en el cosmos’ de Fred Spier, sobre la sostenibilidad de la actual comunicación globalizada. La Gran Historia sitúa al ser humano en el contexto de la evolución cósmica y de la ecología de los recursos. Vivimos hoy en la Era de los Combustibles Fósiles. Con esta energ…[Read more]

This essay traces some of the contexts and media in which “Heracles-Hercules” – as a hero between virtue and hubris – was visible in European societies from the end of the middle ages onwards. It discusses whether this example of the reception, appropriation and transformation of classical myths in the early modern period can be understood as a…[Read more]

For two years, from 1788 to 1790, Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1739-1807) exchanged her familiar surroundings with Rome and Naples. She undertook her furthest and most ambitious journey at the age of almost 49. For the only time the princely widow left Germany or the German territories of the Reich. During her stay, the Duchess…[Read more]

The screen as an interface immerses audiences in an alternate universe. As a result, that interface seems transparent. Through analyses of performances that call attention to filmic genres, such as Edgar Wright’s parody film, Hot Fuzz (2007), and the Wooster Group’s multimedia production, Hamlet (2007), as well as (meta)theatrical operations on…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Reseño aquí el capítulo “In the Wilderness of Forms: Ideas and Things in Thomas Browne’s Cabinets of Curiosity”, de Claire Preston, publicado en el libro de estudios mediáticos retrofuturistas ‘The Renaissance Computer: Knowledge Technology in the First Age of Print’ (ed. Neil Rhodes y Jonathan Sawday, 2000). Los sabios y est…[Read more]

This essay offers a revisionist interpretation of the Imperial German officer corps, whose members have long enjoyed a schizophrenic reputation in the historiography as either consummate military professionals or feudalistic representatives of a bygone political system. Using the career of Wilhelm Groener (1867-1939). it reexamines the…[Read more]

Tal vez uno de los procesos más destacados de la historia de Europa en el siglo XIII sea la configuración de la primera época de esplendor de justas, torneos y todo tipo de espectáculos de riesgo. Aproximadamente entre los años 1170 y 1260, el Viejo Continente asistió a la explosión de estos encuentros, en los que brillaron con luz propia los no…[Read more]