Cultural Politics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Date and Time
Location
"The Untrustworthy Mr. W. A. Mozart: Cartography and the Visualization of Territory and Time in the German Lands, c.1830s-1860s"
Speaker:
Bernhard Struck, Visiting Scholar, Center for European Studies, Harvard University; Associate Professor in Modern European History, School of History, University of St. Andrews.
Contact:
Heather Conrad
hconrad@wcfia.harvard.edu
Chair:
Panagiotis Roilos, Faculty Associate. George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
Abstract:
How were the German Lands seen cartographically between the 1830s and the 1860s? Statistical maps (as thematic maps) were a new way of interpreting territory from c.1830 onward. They provide formerly unknown information on people, languages, religion. However, more information or more accurate maps do not necessarily lead to a more stable understanding of space. Quite the contrary. As objective as mapped dots and numbers may seem, they create a rather messy picture along the borders of the German Lands. This is countered by a new cartographic layer that starts coming up in maps: time and history. How does Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, music, and opera fit into all of this? Well, he does not! Beethoven and Bach are in, Mozart is not.