SFB 948:  Heroes - Heroisations - Heroisms. Transformations and Conjunctures from Antiquity to the Modern Age

• Subject Area: Humanities ; Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: from 2012 to 2024
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 181750155

Since ancient times, heroes and heroines have been crucial for the self-understanding of cultures and communities in and beyond Europe. The SFB responds to a new wave of interest in heroic figures by researching the heroic as a social phenomenon from a transcultural, long-term perspective (antiquity to the present day) that is synchronically and diachronically comparative. The SFB is particularly interested in the social orders that heroic figures at once stabilize and simultaneously call into question. The project investigates when and in what way heroines and heroes serve as figures upon which communities can focus their self-understanding. The project aims to explain how cultural, historical, social and media factors inform what is considered heroic at certain times and in certain cultures – and how this will help to understand processes of heroization and deheroization. Accordingly, the first two funding periods focused on the investigation of these processes and on “heroisms”, i.e. heroically connoted habitus patterns. In the concluding third funding period, heroizations and heroisms will be analyzed as a means of evaluating fundamental cultural-social phenomena, such as political-social upheavals, the constitution of the subject, constructions of masculinity, and affective aesthetics as factors of the social. The research is complemented by projects on knowledge transfer, the development of an online portal, and on public relations as well as the creation of an online reference work on the heroic. Thus, the SFB will provide an accessible synthesis of its research.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Current projects

• H - Syntheses: Online Encyclopedia (Compendium heroicum) (Project Heads Asch, Ronald G. ;  Aurnhammer, Achim ;  von den Hoff, Ralf ;  Schreurs-Morét, Anna )
• INF - Online Portal “Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms” (Project Heads Kellersohn, Antje ;  Leithold, Franz ;  Rau, Oliver )
• S01 - Upheaval, Disruption, and Reinterpretation (Project Heads Dendorfer, Jürgen ;  Eich, Peter ;  Epkenhans, Tim ;  Neutatz, Dietmar ;  Pink, Johanna ;  von Reden, Sitta )
• S02 - Personalization: Subjectification and Authority (Project Heads Bröckling, Ulrich ;  Sommer, Andreas ;  Spakowski, Nicola ;  Striet, Magnus )
• S03 - Masculinities (Project Heads Brink, Cornelia ;  Grage, Joachim ;  Gölz, Olmo ;  Plackinger, Andreas )
• S04 - Aesthetics of Affect (Project Heads Gelz, Andreas ;  von den Hoff, Ralf ;  Korte, Barbara ;  Lethbridge, Stefanie Christiane ;  Schlechtriemen, Tobias ;  Tilg, Stefan )
• T01 - Exhibition “Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms” (Project Heads von den Hoff, Ralf ;  Pieken, Gorch )
• Z - Central Tasks of the Collaborative Research Centre (Project Head von den Hoff, Ralf )
• Ö - Heroes in Education. School Settings and the Transfer of Academic Knowledge (Project Head Hochbruck, Wolfgang )

Completed projects

• A01 - The exceptional as enthrallment und provocation. Comparative historical semantics of the heroic from 1780 to 1850 (Project Head Leonhard, Jörn )
• A02 - The transformation and communication of heroic ideas in the formation of ruler cult in the intercultural context of the Hellenistic World (Project Head von Reden, Sitta )
• A03 - Hagiography as heroisation. Transformations and syncretisms during the French, English, and German early Middle Ages (Project Heads Bihrer, Andreas ;  Heinzer, Felix ;  Studt, Birgit )
• A04 - Heroes and heroisations in public city spaces: Italy and France from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period (Project Head Hubert, Hans W. )
• A05 - The 'éclat' of the hero - Auratic representation of the hero in France from the 17th to the 19th century (Project Head Gelz, Andreas )
• A07 - The voice of the hero. Vocal presentation of the heroic in the opera during the first half of the 19th century (Project Head Seedorf, Thomas )
• B01 - 'Imitatio Alexandri': Heroisms in portraits and images of rulers and heroes in Greco-Roman antiquity (Project Head von den Hoff, Ralf )
• B02 - Heroes of natural philosophy: The scholar as hero in the New Sciences during the long 17th century (Project Head Asch, Ronald G. )
• B03 - Heroes of art vs. war. Heroisation through art in the context of war and peace in the early modern period (Project Head Schreurs-Morét, Anna )
• B04 - 'New Washingtons?': The heroisation of American presidents from the early republic to Reconstruction (Project Head Butter, Michael )
• B05 - National crisis and political heroism in the long 19th century: Bonapartism in European comparison (Project Head Leonhard, Jörn )
• B06 - National hero, folk hero, anti-hero: Aleksandr Suvorov and Yemelyan Pugachev from the 18th to the early 20th centuries (Project Head Neutatz, Dietmar )
• B07 - The hero as disturbing element: Regarding the sociology of exceptionality (Project Head Bröckling, Ulrich )
• B08 - Aesthetic heroism: Concepts of heroisation in Stefan George's Work and Circle (Project Head Aurnhammer, Achim )
• C01 - Between princely service and noble self-assertion: Heroism as noble culture and collective mentality in the German and the French late Middle Ages (Project Head Studt, Birgit )
• C02 - Competing models of heroism and the hero in England and France, ca. 1580-1630, in a comparative perspective: Monarch, soldier, martyr, religious warrior (Project Head Asch, Ronald G. )
• C03 - Imagined competition: 'Exotic' heroes in English and German heroic drama of the late 17th century (Project Heads Aurnhammer, Achim ;  Korte, Barbara )
• C04 - Competing semantics and medialisations of the heroic in British magazines between 1850 and 1900 (Project Head Korte, Barbara )
• D01 - The Heroic in the Intercultural and Political Field of Conflict of the Imperial Roman World up to the 7th Century (Project Heads Eich, Peter ;  von den Hoff, Ralf ;  von Reden, Sitta )
• D02 - Knights, Rulers, Heroes: Heroic Interpretational Models of Warring Elites in the European High Middle Ages (Project Heads Dendorfer, Jürgen ;  Studt, Birgit )
• D03 - Epic Heroism in the Early Modern Period: Heroizations of Emperor Maximilian I in Latin Epic Poetry (Project Head Tilg, Stefan )
• D04 - Grazia and Terribilità: Charismatizations of the Artist as a Heroic Phenomenon in the Early Modern Period (Project Head Schreurs-Morét, Anna )
• D05 - Models of the Heroic in Military Self-Portrayals from 1756-1815 in German-French Comparison (Project Head Asch, Ronald G. )
• D06 - Expected Heroes: Heroic Waiting in German Literature of the Early 20th Century (Project Head Aurnhammer, Achim )
• D07 - From Military to Political Heroization: Paul von Hindenburg and Philippe Pétain in Comparison (Project Head Leonhard, Jörn )
• D08 - Heroization of Work in China and Russia between 1920 and 1960 (Project Heads Neutatz, Dietmar ;  Spakowski, Nicola )
• D09 - Sport and the Heroic in French Literature from the Interwar Period to the Present (Project Head Gelz, Andreas )
• D10 - Image Warriors and Images of War: War Photographers as Heroes and Hero Makers in the Second World War (Project Head Brink, Cornelia )
• D11 - Young Heroes of Post-Heroism: Negotiations of the Heroic in Scandinavian Young-Adult Fiction after 1945 (Project Head Grage, Joachim )
• D12 - Sociological Diagnoses of the Present between Post-Heroism and New Figures of the Extraordinary (Project Head Bröckling, Ulrich )
• D13 - Myth and Heroization Processes: Hans Blumberg (Project Head Striet, Magnus )
• D14 - Heroization Strategies in Conflicts of the Near East since the 1970s (Project Head Pink, Johanna )
• D15 - The Heroic in 21st Century British Television Series: Discourses and Aesthetic Strategies in a Popular Medium (Project Heads Falkenhayner, Nicole ;  Korte, Barbara )
• D16 - Semantic Transformation of pre-figurative heroes in Iran since 1925 (Project Head Epkenhans, Tim )
• MGK - Integrated Research Training Group (Project Heads von den Hoff, Ralf ;  Korte, Barbara )

• Applicant Institution: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg
• Participating Institution: Zentrum für Militärgeschichte und Sozialwissenschaften der Bundeswehr
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Ralf von den Hoff