Imperial Biographers? Imperial identities and self-image in the work of Constantin von Wurzbach and Aleksandr A. Polovcov

• Applicant: Nora Mengel
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2021 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 455319401

The late 19th century can be described as the age of huge biographical encyclopaedia. Especially in the empires of Central and Eastern Europe, such projects of substantial biographical works emerged. Constantin Wurzbach began to publish Das Biographische Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich (1856-1891) in the Habsburg Monarchy and Aleksandr A. Polovcov started to form the Russkij Biografičeskij Slovar‘ (1896-1918) in Russia. Usually, historians use these dictionaries as sources for their research and erroneously refer to them as national biographies. The present dissertation uses historical discourse analysis and methods of narrative theory in the framework of newer comparative studies of empires to explore them sui generis. The comparative approach focuses on three major topics: First, on the biographies of the editors, Wurzbach and Polovcov, and on their ideas of empire. Second, on the history of the edition of both biographical encyclopaedias and on similarities and differences in their respective formation processes. Third, on both encyclopaedia as means for identification with empire and on their underlying (regional, national, social, religious, etc.) conceptions of community. This approach made it possible to decrypt the matrices of both collective biographies. It turns out: In both collections concrete mechanisms are used to generate a feeling of cohesion of the whole empire. Wurzbach and Polovcov created particular cultural functional memories on the basis of different perceptions of time and space. The present book constitutes an innovative approach to uncover semantics of empire from an actor-centric perspective and provides pertinent insights for the study of biography and the history of empires.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants