The aristocratic self at the end of the Ancien Régime
The diaries of Christian Georg von Helmolt and Karl Heinrich Julius von Salisch
The project uses the diaries of the Gotha guard commander and chamberlain Christian Georg von Helmolt (1728-1805) from 1783 to 1788 and the journals of the court junketer and publicist Karl Heinrich Julius Graf von Salisch (1769-1833) from 1794 to 1806 to analyse the self-conceptions of (lower) aristocratic writers in Gotha around 1800.
The aim is to trace processes of self-constitution in the diaries in order to work out how aristocratic identity was formed in the face of social change at the end of the 18th century. One focus here is on aristocratic concepts of masculinity. In this way, the work generates insights into various aspects of everyday life in residential towns and at court and makes a contribution to research into the Thuringian aristocratic landscape, which - especially with regard to the 18th century - has been comparatively little studied.
Project activities and results
Publications
Erik Liebscher: Das adelige Ich. Praktiken der Subjektivierung in den Tagebüchern Christian Georg von Helmolts (1728–1805) und Karl Heinrich Julius von Salischs (1769–1838), in: Mitteilungen der Residenzen-Kommission der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Neue Folge: Stadt und Hof 8 (2019), S. 161–171.
Project informations
Institution
Forschungszentrum Gotha
Project participants
Erik Liebscher, M.A.
Duration
seit 2018
Citation link