Translatio and Renovatio Imperii - legitimacy construction through imperial succession and renewal from antiquity to the 21st century.
Org. David Engels (Poznań), Gerd Morgenthaler (Siegen), Altay Coşkun (Waterloo, Ontario)
Instytut Zachodni, Poznań, Poland
(18.-20.7.2022)
That empires are not a thing of the past, but concepts that are still current and influential today, has been vividly demonstrated in recent weeks by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the deployment of a legitimation strategy that is not only imperialist, but ultimately also “imperial” in a proper historical sense.
Research on empires has developed rapidly in recent years. The term “empire”, usually defined as a major political power with universal pretensions, is a very specific political construct found in most major civilisations in world history. Recent research usually compares across time and space empires that were far apart and largely unconnected. On the one hand, this identifies specific, distinctive features for each empire; on the other hand, many parallels suggest that all empires are equally characterised by a dynamic of growth, peak and decline. Another common feature is the fact that an “empire” is never limited to its mere material reality, but always includes complex ideologies that are produced, repeated or changed by the ruling elites and usually exert lasting intellectual and political influence beyond the political existence of an empire.
Despite promising comparative insights, however, one aspect has remained underexposed and will be the focus of the planned conference: the legitimation of imperial rule as a renewal (renovatio) or as a succession (translatio) of respective earlier empires. These strategies played an important role from early human history, through antiquity and the Middle Ages, right up to modern times (with the idea of the Roma aeterna naturally playing the most important role in the Western world) and even shape the European present, albeit in a different guise. Not only the totalitarian regimes, such as Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union, but also the liberal democracies have endeavoured and continue to endeavour to connect with an idealised past. They do so in order to place themselves in a historical continuity and to mobilise the corresponding emotions – think only of the “Charlemagne Prize”, which is closely linked to the self-portrayal of the EU and European unification.
Even German-Polish relations can hardly be understood (despite the virtual disappearance of imperial ambitions) without the persistence of hopes for renewal of or continuity with old historical conditions, considering, for example, the still influential models of the Jagiellonian state on the one side or the Sacrum Imperium on the other. For not only the European Union, but also politics and civil society in Poland and Germany are striving in a time of upheaval and challenge to come to terms with their past - as critically as it is required; as constructively as it is deserved.
The first block of the planned conference will deal with selected examples of the above-mentioned question from various periods of pre-modernity in geographical zones as diverse as Europe, Africa, the Near East and East Asia. After a general thematic introduction by Justyna Schulz (Poznań), Thomas Zimmermann (Ankara) will deal with Hittite history, Altay Coşkun (Waterloo ON) with Hellenistic Judaism looking back on Iron-Age empires, Rabbi Ben Scolnic (Hamden CT) with Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity, Germain Payen (Rouen) with the Iranian nomadic frontier of the ancient world, Loic Borgies (Namur) with the parallels between the Roman Principate and the Chinese Han Empire, Augustine Dickinson (Toronto / Hamburg) with medieval Ethiopia, and Stone Chen (Waterloo ON) with long-term ideological continuities in Chinese space.
A second block will focus on modern Europe with an emphasis on the German-Polish area. Zdzisław Krasnodębski (Bremen) will analyse modern German-Polish relations diachronically in the context of imperial legitimation strategies. Grzegorz Lewicki (Gdańsk) will critically compare the concepts of multiculturalism and feudalism in the Jagiellonian and Ottoman empires as well as their ideological developments. Henrieke Stahl (Trier) will consider the presence of historical trauma in Eastern European poetry. Grzegorz Kucharczyk (Gorzów / Warszawa) will deal with Friedrich Naumann's Central European Plan and place it in the continuity of German empire-building. Misia Doms (Mannheim / Pädagogische Hochschule Niederösterreich) will trace the imperial phantom pain in Austrian post-war literature. Jörg Baberowski (Berlin) will deal with the renaissance of all-Russian imperial ideas from Stalin to Putin. Magdalena Bainczyk (Kraków) will analyse the disputes concerning the determination of the exact legal nature of the European Union. Gerd Morgenthaler (Siegen) will place the construction of the European Union in the field of tension between supranational, quasi-world-state construction and imperial tradition. Finally, David Engels (Poznań / Bruxelles) will attempt to summarise the various concepts and developments presented and illustrate them with the Poznań City Castle: Built for Wilhelm II as a counter-design to the old Polish Jagiellonian Castle, later lavishly renovated as a residence for Adolf Hitler, and finally used under communism as a city administration and university, the building, like hardly any other, offers an overview of the most diverse types of imperial constructions and legitimation strategies of succession in the 20th century.
The planned conference will not only bring together hitherto largely unconnected groups of scholars from all stages of academic careers and from such different cultures of knowledge as Canada, Germany and Poland; it will also and above all provide an opportunity for a critical and constructive exchange of different views of history. The aim is not only to achieve a benevolent “understanding” of the historical conditionality of the different contemporary world views and perceptions of the other, but also to gain insights into the overarching mechanisms that condition and determine political and propagandistic dynamics – dynamics, which seem to have some validity that goes beyond individual civilizations. Even in the 21st century, we are not only experiencing the resurgence of many ideologies that were previously declared dead, but are facing ever growing challenges in our efforts for a deepening of European cooperation. This endeavour is currently threatened not only by a rift between North and South, but also East and West. Hence, both an objectification and relativisation of imperial ideologies appear to be most urgent.
Conference date: 18-20.07.2022