Teresa Mocharitsch

With Tacitus towards the "Fatherland" early Germanic history and visual culture from 1648 to 1815

The idea of historical times is significantly influenced by images that were created in the last centuries and are being reproduced to this day. In the field of early Germanic history, they are based on the descriptions of the Roman author Tacitus in many aspects. For this reason, the present dissertation examines how the reception of his works has influenced and transformed relevant representations. The time between the Peace of Westphalia and the Congress of Vienna serves as the period of study, since during that time early Germanic history became a part of the historical discourse in the United Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire. A development that is essentially linked to a new status of the nation, which gained increasing importance as an element of identification in the 18th century. This change is visible in the field of visual culture, which not only attest to the concepts of history but have also shaped them. In addition to depictions of Germanic life, Roman-Germanic conflicts such as the Batavian Revolt and the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest were appropriated and linked to contemporary political developments. The main part of the thesis analyzes examples from book illustrations, drawings, (representative) paintings and sculptures on the basis of the writings "Germania", "Histories" and "Annals" and examines their relation to the ancient source. It demonstrates which descriptions were reproduced, which were ignored, and which were recombined. These selection processes led to a canonization of the motifs in the period under investigation, which caused a standardization of the iconography. The variety of topics demonstrates the influence of Tacitus on the image of Germanic history, which is understood as "patriotic" in the Netherlands and in German-speaking countries alike.