Kathrin Maurer

Communication and Language in Niklas Luhmann’s Systems-Theory

This article investigates the function and reality of language in Niklas Luhmanns systems theory. How can one interpret the systems-theoretical assumption that language is based on communication? Luhmann describes language as a dynamic media/form relationship, which is able to couple the social and psychological system. This structural coupling, which constructs consciousness and language as two autonomous systems, raises problems if one defines language from a cognitive point of view. This article discusses these problems and aims to develop assumptions and questions within the systems-theoretical approach.

Visualizing the past : the power of the image in German historicism

Visual media had a decisive impact on how the past was perceived in 19th-century Germany. The panorama, photography, and book illustrations can portray the past spatially. By investigating the visual vocabulary of different historicist genres (illustrated history books, maps, historiography), this volume expands an understanding of German historicist culture as a multi-medial phenomenon. It demonstrates that the image works as a powerful tool to propagate the ideology of German imperialism, but also can critically reflect the political agendas of national historicism.

Visual power: The scopic regime of military drone operations:

This article analyzes how visual scopic regimes of military drones configure violence as a form of man hunting. For the French philosopher Grégoire Chamayou, man hunting embodies a type of cynegetic (hunting related) violence, which military drones can execute by power surveillance. Research often focuses on the political, legal, anthropological, and ethical aspects of this type of violence; the aspects of its visual framing are often underexposed. In order to change this shortcoming, this article draws attention to the medial aspects of this violence by investigating the drone’s scopic regime. The scopic regime refers to the drone’s visual configuration, i.e. its ocular operations of capture, its optical perspective on the target, the visual sensing of the drone pilot, as well as the target’s range of vision. Three scopic dimensions of military drones, namely hypervisibility, visual immersion, and invisibility are investigated. In doing so, this article explores how drones stage, interpret, convey, mediate, and execute violence as man hunting. Excursions to the works of contemporary visual artists are conducted in order to illustrate aesthetic interventions against the drone’s visual superpower.

Adalbert Stifter's Poetics of Clouds and Nineteenth-century Meteorology

This article examines the representation of clouds in Adalbert Stifters (1805–68) literary writing. His ubiquitous representations of clouds signify the poetic challenges to represent empirical reality of natural phenomena (such as weather phenomena) within the literary medium. The article connects his representation of clouds with scholarly discourses of meteorology during the nineteenth century and offers as context observations by the meteorologist Andreas von Baumgartner (1793–1865). Baumgartner worked as a Professor of Natural Sciences at the University of Vienna and was a friend of Stifters. Taking Baumgartners epistemological ambiguities about the weather as a point of departure, the article demonstrates how Stifters novella Kalkstein (1853) not only displays similar insecurities, but also how the text makes use of them to reflect the possibilities of poetic representation within the mode of literary realism.

Theodor Fontane's representation of monuments in the Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg

Theodor Fontane was a passionate visitor of historical monuments, and his text Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg entail many references to sculptures, obelisks, churches, and museums. Fontanes description of monuments represents a specific view on history, which undermines a teleological perspective on the past. The article shows that Fontanes monuments embody eschatological, allegorical, and arabesque interpretations of the past, which in turn poetizes and de-historizes history.

Visualizing the Past: The Power of the Image in Franz Kugler and Adolph Menzel's Illustrated History Book Geschichte Friedrichs des Großen (1842)

Current scholars often neglect the formative role of popular visual media for the formation of nineteenth-century German academic historicism and exclusively focus on its textual and narrative design. This article aims to change this perspective by exploring the representational power of images in the genre of illustrated history books, specifically in the work on Prussian history by the art historian Franz Kugler and the painter Adolph Menzel, Geschichte Friedrichs des Großen (1842). Menzels use of wood engraving created a revolutionary text and image relationship, because his illustrations could be printed directly into the text. Menzel and Kuglers medial hybrids reconfigure historical representation by referencing visual perception modes exhibited in panoramas, photography, and landscape paintings. Their work represents the era of Frederick II beyond a narrative paradigm and highlights visual-spatial conceptions of the past that are not commonly associated with German academic historicism.