Territorialization from below? Belongings and state building, Leipzig 1485-1806
Final Report Abstract
The nation state is deemed to be modernity’s classic paradigm of order: state and nation are conceptually imagined as belonging together; citizenship and the principle of territoriality, so the (implicit) assumption, have coincided. However, current research and socio-political debates show that this (national) territorial concept of belonging is reaching its limits: transnational and supranational entities on the one hand and non-territorially organized affiliations on the other are replacing or transforming territorial concepts of belonging. This means that the nation-state paradigm can no longer maintain its comprehensive validity. This not only raises the question of what could come after the nation state. At the same time, there is a growing interest in the time before the nation state, i.e. its formation in the pre-modern era and its alternatives and variances. This is where the proposed project fits in. Inspired and informed by the current processes of dissolution, it focuses on the paradigm’s formation, more precisely: on the connection between belonging and territoriality in the early modern period. Using the example of the town of Leipzig in the period from 1485 to 1806, the aim is to map the interconnectedness and coexistence of differently constituted belongings with divergent spatial scopes and to explore their historicity. In the first step, the question of which spaces in early modern Leipzig were actually created and defined by the various (sovereign, municipal, ecclesiastical, university) rulers and administrative structures will be examined. The second step examines the transmission belts between the normative setting and the anchoring of these guidelines in the everyday life of the city's inhabitants. On the basis of maps, city views and other symbolic visualizations, as well as city council and ceremonial records, it will be examined how different spaces were visualized and which practices and rituals were used to create a mental map, i.e. for anchoring the authorities’ spatial arrangements in the minds of the city's inhabitants. The third step focuses on the actors who moved and interacted within these urban spaces. On the basis of spatial self-positioning, for example in supplications and witness interrogation records, we reconstruct how the actors constructed their own spaces and to what extent the specifications from above were relevant in this process. By always asking about the changes that can be observed in these configurations of spatial affiliation in the course of the early modern period, the project aims to shed light on the currently highly relevant connection between territorialization, state formation and belonging from a historical perspective and to expand the classic narrative of state building to include the central, but hitherto barely considered facet of territorialization from below.
Publications
-
Bildung einer sächsischen Steuergemeinschaft? Der Einfluss der Steuerverfassung auf die Konstruktion eines einheitlichen Staatsvolks, Erlangen 2016 [214 S.]. ISBN: 978-3-944057-73-6
Dominik Sauerer
-
Grenze, in: Burghardt, Daniel / Zirfas, Jörg (Hgg.): Pädagogische Heterotopien von A bis Z, Weinheim / Basel 2018, S. 94–106. ISBN: 978-3-7799-5225-1
Dominik Sauerer
