Historicizing. Establishment of a cultural pattern in Schiller's historical dramas on the stage and in the schools of the 19th century

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Nina Birkner
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262900537

This research project aims to scrutinize how different forms of staging Schillers Wallenstein trilogy contributed to the socio-cultural manifestations of the historical thinking that emerged in the 18th century and has since shaped our ways of perceiving the world and coping with life. To allow sensible deductions, a thorough analysis of theatrical approaches to Wallenstein is fundamental, with research encompassing exemplary staging practices from the very first performance to the First World War. Drawing conclusions from surviving texts and graphical material, the project sheds light on different ways of onstage historicizing as well as its establishment over the course of the 19th century. It also explores the diverse implications and functions theatre artists, performers and audiences attribute to this method of scene-setting. Furthermore, the research strives to unravel correlations between the implications theatre artists seek to evoke with a historicized staging and their underlying interpretation of the literary source. In this context, crucial conflicting aspects of historicization such as historical distance versus aesthetic visualization and emphasizing facticity versus awareness of a constructed reality are explored as well. Drawing on yet largely untapped sources by analysing artifacts of reception (theatre reviews, adaptations, photographs and other graphical material) uncovered during months of intensive international research, the project likewise aims at revealing practices of handling said problems accompanying historicization. Ultimately, it tries to trace the effects of theatrical historicizing on an audience of non-historians.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants