EXC 2060 C3-27 - Caricatures as an indicator and factor of fundamental religious conflicts in the 19th and 20th century (Karikatur)

Basic data for this project

Description

The aim is to analyze caricatures as an indicator and driving force of secular and religious change in order to better recognize and differentiate the multiple social, confessional and religious-political dimensions of conflict during the European culture wars. Like modern anti-Semitism, modern anti-clericalism was a European phenomenon in the 19th century. It ranged from the Iberian Peninsula to France, Germany and Sweden. The linguistic discourses of individual countries have already been compared, but not the culture of the caricature landscape. Caricatures directed against the clergy, the practice of piety and political Catholicism or, conversely, in the rare ultramontane caricatures, against anticlerical, liberal-secular currents are examined. Until now, historical research into modern religion (and politics) has been based primarily on textual sources. Images have been studied little, caricatures even less, and at most have been added as welcome illustrations. Beyond this logocentrism, however, this medium of communication must also be taken seriously: as an expression of religion or hostility to religion, of religious change or criticism of religion. After all, the "iconic" or "visual turn" reached historiography more than two decades ago and should also be made usable for the history of religion. Images and caricatures - distributed in large-circulation magazines since the 1830s - shaped and changed religious perceptions of the world. For this reason, they are systematically examined as an indicator and factor of change in bourgeois society, self-understanding and socialization in relation to religion, using the Berliner Bremse, Ulk and Kladderadatsch as examples. Caricatures marked the boundaries of "belonging". They were not aimed at religion and Catholics as a whole, but marginalized their political and ecclesiastical protagonists. The "true" religion was to be separated from a clerically overformed one. In France, society was divided into clerical and secular camps, while in Germany Catholics were considered enemies of the Reich. Caricatures were not only intended to amuse contemporary viewers, but above all to convey to them who was ascribed as "belonging" to their own (social, national, political, religious or secular) group, who was denied it and under what conditions "belonging" could be achieved for those who did not belong, for example by giving up their "belonging to Rome". Anti-clerical and anti-Semitic caricatures are also compared. Common visiotypes - Jesuits were already drawn as vermin in 1871 - as well as differences, especially racism, can be deciphered in this way.