Wolfgang Schmale

Kulturtransfer

Kulturelle Praxis im 16. Jahrhundert

Das europäische 16. Jahrhundert zeichnet sich wie kein anderes davor und kein anderes danach durch eine ambivalente, wenn nicht polyvalente Mischung aus europäischer Kultur, teileuropäischen Kulturen, nationalen und regionalen Kulturen aus. Derselbe Satz ließe sich auf das späte 20. Jahrhundert anwenden, nur mit anderer Gewichtung: Während im 16. Jahrhundert der Weg in die nationalen Kulturen führte, führt er im frühen 21. Jahrhundert aus diesen hinaus. Während wir heute diesen Weg aufgrund historischer Erfahrung bewusst wählen oder wenigstens wählen können, handelte es sich im 16. Jahrhundert um eine strukturelle Entwicklung, deren Ergebnis nicht absehbar war und die nicht vorschnell als alternativlos charakterisiert werden darf.
Angesichts der einsetzenden nationalkulturellen Grenzziehungen und Grenzdefinitionen im 16. Jahrhundert erscheint es sinnvoll, den Ansatz „Kulturtransfer“ auch für das 16. Jahrhundert einzusetzen und experimentell zu erproben – was die Ergebnisse der Beiträge dieses umfassenden Bandes eindrucksvoll unter Beweis stellen.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Vorbemerkung des Herausgebers
Wolfgang Schmale

„Kulturtransfer“ – Europäische Geschichte gegen den Strich nationaler Mythen
Hubert C. Ehalt, Michel Espagne, Martina Kaller-Dietrich, Lutz Musner, Renate Pieper, Wolfgang Schmale (Podiumsdiskussion in den „Wiener Vorlesungen“)

I Theorie und Konzept „Kulturtransfer“

Einleitung: Das Konzept „Kulturtransfer“ und das 16. Jahrhundert. Einige theoretische Grundlagen
Wolfgang Schmale

Der theoretische Stand der Kulturtransferforschung
Michel Espagne

Diskussion
Thomas Angerer, Michel Espagne, Wolfgang Schmale, Wolfgang E.J. Weber, Cornel A. Zwierlein

Komparative Kommunikationsgeschichte und Kulturtransfer im 16. Jahrhundert – Methodische Überlegungen entwickelt am Beispiel der Kommunikation über die französischen Religionskriege (1559-1598) in Deutschland und Italien Cornel A. Zwierlein

II Konsumtheorie und Kulturtransfer

Einleitung und kurze Skizze zum Forschungsstand in der Tschechischen Republik, der Slowakei und Polen
Dana Stefanová

Konsumtheorie und Kulturtransfer. Einige Perspektiven für die Forschung zum 16. Jahrhundert
Martin Mulsow

Kommentar
Renate Pieper

III Außereuropäische kulturelle Referenzen

Introduction: La Terre Sainte et le Nouveau Monde: Transferts culturels extra-européens au XVIe siècle ?
Cornel A. Zwierlein

The Holy Land and Franciscan Reform
Megan Armstrong

Commentaire: De la Méditerranée aux Nouveaux Mondes : le processus de transfert culturel ® extra-européen ¯ en Europe au XVIe siècle entre histoire des relations internationales et histoire des savoirs et des pratiques culturelles
Maria Matilde Benzoni

IV Aspekte der Polivalenz:
Europakulturelle Teilsysteme und Kulturtransfer

Einleitung (zu den Beiträgen von Friedrich Beiderbeck, Arno Strohmeyer, Marina Dmitrieva-Einhorn)
Christina Lutter

Deutsche kulturelle Referenzen in der französischen Außenpolitik im 16. Jahrhundert
Friedrich Beiderbeck

Kulturtransfer durch Diplomatie: Die kaiserlichen Botschafter in Spanien im Zeitalter Philipps II. und das Werden der Habsburgermonarchie (1560-1598) Arno Strohmeyer

Case molto simile all’italiane. Italienrezeption und Kulturtransfer in Ostmitteleuropa im 16. Jahrhundert
Marina Dmitrieva-Einhorn

„Romanität“ – „Germanität“
Markus Völkel

Kommentar zu „Romanität“/“Germanität“
Wolfgang E. J. Weber

V Vermittlungsinstanzen des Kulturtransfers im 16. Jahrhundert

Einleitung (zu den Beiträgen von Katrin Keller, Martin Scheutz, Chiara Lastraioli)
Thomas Fröschl

Zwischen Wissenschaft und Kommerz. Das Spektrum kultureller Mittler im 16. Jahrhundert
Katrin Keller

Kulturtransfer der Namenlosen und der Nachbarn. Versuch einer Ergänzung zu  einem Konzept
Martin Scheutz

Les pasquini – un ® lieu de mémoire ¯ européen ?
Chiara Lastraioli

Von studiolo und acutezza. Zeit – Raum – Objekt: Formen der Wahrnehmung
Marlies Raffler

Collecting in Sixteenth-Century Croatia in the Light of Erudition and Cultural Transfer
Zarka Vujic

Cultural Transfers in 16th-Century Europe
English abstracts

Megan C. Armstrong
The Holy Land and Franciscan Reform

Sixteenth-century travel accounts by Franciscans consistently portrayed the Christian Holy Land of Palestine as a distinctly Franciscan landscape. This examination will show that the friars did so for political, economic and spiritual reasons. They were official guardians of the Christian holy sites in Palestine, and they were concerned about maintaining custody of the major holy sites in the face of rising Ottoman authority and continuing Christian hostility. Equally importantly, they saw in their travel accounts a vehicle for transmitting to their European readership the spiritually reformative effects of the holy sites. The spiritual experience which they were trying to recreate, however, was distinctly Franciscan in nature. The Holy Land was as much the birthplace of their Order as it was of Christ because of Francis‘ determination to imitate the life of Christ. According to the Franciscan accounts, the chamber of the Sepulchre, the Garden of Olives, the birthplace of Mary and the other Christian holy sites of Palestine all pulsated with a powerful, emotional, sensual form spirituality – one that not surprisingly resembled Franciscan spirituality. Both as a source of spirituality and as an archetype of the mission, Palestine resonated powerfully in the Franciscan psyche throughout the sixteenth century.

Friedrich Beiderbeck
German Cultural References in French 16th-Century Foreign Policy

In the 16th century, two German cultural references (Protestantism and imperial constitution) strongly influenced the political intercommunication between the German Empire and France. Both very much challenged the French identity. The Reformation and development of protestant confession in Germany endangered the unity of the French state and society. The opposition to the imperial universalism of Charles V and the hegemony of the House of the Hapsburgs led to a deep discrepancy between domestic and foreign policy. While French foreign policy favoured confessional pluralism in the Empire, absolutism in France preferred confessional monism. The French attitude towards the imperial constitution shows a remarkable similarity to that dualism. Contrary to the German political system the French Kingdom tried to restrict the corporative-aristocratic element. The foreign policy however supported federalism as a means of gaining the balance of power and as a remedy for the dominance of the House of Austria. In this way, Protestantism and the imperial constitution were integrated into the European state system.

Marina Dmitrieva-Einhorn
Case molto simile all’italiane. The Reception of Italy and Cultural Transfer in Eastern Central Europe during the 16th Century

The reception of Italy in Eastern Central European art is treated under the perspective of cultural transfer. Architecture and its decorations are taken as an example which shows how the Italian forms, projects and „models“ were perceived, used and modified. The contribution covers Poland and Bohemia on the one hand, and different social groups which worked as cultural transmitters such as artists, on the other hand. The media are of special interest.

Michel Espagne
The Theoretic Fundamentals of Cultural Transfer Research

The contribution sketches schematically the development of research on cultural transfer. The difference between comparatism and cultural transfer research is emphasized as well as the history of human sciences such as philosophy and art history as a privileged field of application for cultural transfer research. The latter now focuses more on regional history than national history and opens new perspectives for regional history. Transfer means exchange procedure between more than two cultural areas (i.e. between Germany, France and Russia). The history of the construction of memories is an element of cultural transfer and can be applied to the 16th century. Aby Warburg’s interpretation of art history has instigated the construction a cultural transfer theory.

Thomas Fröschl
Agents of Cultural Transfer in the 16th Century

In Early Modern times, individuals as well as groups of persons from a variety of backgrounds and with different skills, helped to establish contacts and provided for the exchange of ideas in the process of cultural transfers among different parts of and culturs within Europe. The manifold activities and undertakings of these mediators, communicators, or agents resulted in changing perceptions of things, opinions, and views. Jacques Barzun tried to explain what is meant here: New knowledge about alien customs creates self-consciousness. This is a fact and a theme: as soon as comparisons are made, one’s own customs no longer seem inevitable. If others can do common things differently, why shouldn’t we? The papers in this section presented by Katrin Keller, Martin Scheutz, and Chiara Lastraioli present their findings of characteristic examples of 16th century agents and communicators, basically in Central Europe and Italy. All three scholars are dealing with specific aspects of the cultural agents‘ motives and the reception of their activities as mediators.

Katrin Keller
Between Science and Commerce. Cultural Mediators in the 16th Century

The contribution starts from the spectrum of cultural mediators as it has been established by different studies on cultural transfers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Which groups among such cultural mediators one can also find in the 16th century? This was the case for a majority of them, among them the „emigrés, immigrés et voyageurs“, just as the „professionnels de la médiation culturelle“ and the „transporteurs des références culturelles“ (these categories have been established by Michael Werner). We can also find many differences between the situation in the 16th century on the one hand, and in the 18th and 19th centuries on the other hand, for example with regard to the missing of translators, booksellers and publicists in the earlier period. Anyway, we must see the smaller institutionalisation of transfers, because theatres or publishing companies were still seldom. On this condition, the princely court gets a greater importance as turntable for transfers. Finally, the contribution refers also to the relevance of social groups like „exulants“ and migrants and to the relevance of women for transfers.

Chiara Lastraioli
The ‚Pasquini‘: A European ‚lieu de mémoire‘?

Starting out from the recent debates about the concept of ‚cultural transfer‘ and the ‚lieu de mémoire‘, this article concentrates on the transfer of a particular literary genre, the pasquini (pasquils). The genre of the anonymous pasquinate (pasquinades, pasquils), written in verse, emerged at the beginning of the 16th century in Rome. During the succeeding decades, it diffused into France, England and the German-speaking regions, frequently taking on very different forms and functions due to a contamination with literary genres and structures already existing in the different cultural and linguistic spheres. In spite of those transformations, corresponding to the different literary modes and the particular necessities of polemics, the pasquini preserved some distinct characteristics from the original Roman model like biting irony, anonymity and a vivid polemic spirit. By way of these elements, the original satirical and irreverent matrix remained recognizable, even at a distance of some decades. This fact contributed to the successful incorporation of this polemic genre into a broad variety of propagandist literature during the 16th century.

Christina Lutter
Introduction to Part IV: Aspects of Polyvalence. Cultural Sub-systems and Cultural Transfer in Europe

In my contribution I try to sum up and relate three papers held by Friedrich Beiderbeck, Arno Strohmeyer and Marina Dmitrieva in the section titled „Aspects of Polyvalence. Cultural Sub-systems and Cultural Transfer in Europe“. All accounts are concerned with intercultural references in the fields of dynastic politics, diplomacy, and artistic production in the 16th century. Their common interest consists in questioning the stability of political and cultural systems by concentrating on the persons involved in processes of cultural production and reception and their actions within specific early modern contexts. They ask for forms and procedures of communication, shaped by and on their part influencing discursive formations, relations of power and representation, and perceptions of the groups one belongs to as well as of the „Other“. This acceptance of the heterogeneity, polyvalence, and the overlapping of cultural identifications at the same time allows to question rigid concepts of identity formation and to deconstruct national myths.

Martin Mulsow
Theory of Consumption and Cultural Transfer. Some Research Perspectives

Cultural Exchange and Cultural Consumption are both recent research paradigms, which have been originally applied to the modern nation state. So, the attempt to connect them in regard to Early Modern Europe has to face two problems: How has each paradigm to be modified for the pre-national period? And: Can cultural exchange in Early Modern Europe be described in terms of cultural consumption? This contribution argues that this is possible and sketches eight fields of application: material objects in exchange, transfer of practices of consumption, overcoming conflicts through consumption, identity through consumption of foreign goods, transfer of goods for conspicuous consumption, the ‚flaneur‘ in 16th century, ambivalence of precious foreign objects, and early modern advertising across the borders.

Marlies Raffler
Between studiolo and acutezza. Time, Space, Object: Modes of Perception

In a theoretical and methodological approach to the problem, the article first tries to outline the various starting positions for the realization of „cultural exchange“: the concept of „friend – foe“; private contacts (particularly among artists and scholars); „criminal“ machinations; conventional exchange or trade; the search for raw materials; conscious and selective or unconscious and unreflected adoption of „tradition“. The examination of the general conditions for the transfer of scholarly/scientific knowledge and of institutionalised erudition also involves a look at the role collections played in the process: In which ways did collections contribute to the growth of knowledge on the one hand, and to a „shift“ of knowledge on the other hand – a „shift“ intended to provide the clarity and availability of knowledge necessary for achieving the ideal of mental agility? Several concrete examples (particular museum objects, principles of classification and organisation for encyclopaedic collections, concepts of memory as a storage of knowledge) are used to show how the network of organizing/classifying individual, space and object is influenced by neutral – you could also call it accidental – „transfer“ and conscious reception alike.

Martin Scheutz
Cultural Transfers of Neighbors and the Nameless: Remarks on a Concept

The concept of cultural transfer takes into account concretely distinguishable persons or occupational groups and their activities that contribute to this transfer.  Apart from immigrants/emigrants and travelers, this concept has come to also consider „professionals“ (such as academics, teachers, etc.) – but not the „lower classes“, who are difficult to make out in the sources – as points of cultural transfer. But it is, in fact, precisely these lower classes which represent a group that was highly mobile  – and strongly criminalized by the authorities. Aside from begging, members of the lower classes performed services of all kinds to earn their daily bread. Beggars, vagrant mercenaries and „pilgrims“ made long, seasonal journeys in the attempt to scrape out a living, to escape the oppressive measures of the authorities, and to build up flexible networks of support. By virtue of their high degree of mobility, the lower classes made sizable contributions in terms of cultural transfers, as in the case of beggars, for example, who would purposely clothe themselves in the manner of their places of origin, posing as foreigners in need or offering  – and thereby also disseminating – magical services (animal blessings, etc.). Records from court trials, in particular, could prove helpful in  shedding more light on these often „hidden“ cultural transfer activities.

Wolfgang Schmale
Cultural Transfer and the 16th Century: Theoretic Fundamentals of a Concept

The concept of „cultural transfer“ has been largely accepted by the cultural studies but there does not exist any theory of cultural transfer. Wolfgang Schmale, for the first time, outlines the elements of a theory of cultural transfers in early modern Europe. He then focuses on cultural transfers in 16th-century Europe and sums up the contributions to this volume.

Dana Stefanová
Introduction to Part II, Theory of Consumption and Cultural Transfer: Recent Research in Czechia, Slovakia and Poland

In the first part, the comment addresses hypotheses of the theory of consumption and cultural transfer. It raises the question of the function of consumption and whether the theory of consumption is an adequate tool considering the complexity of consumption and its different qualitative levels: the consumption of goods on the one hand and consumption as a process on the other. This impression is especially strengthened by the definition of culture as „the whole way of life“. The comment argues to consider social differences in consumption behaviour. The second part investigates if the theory of consumption was taken up in Czech, Slovak and Polish research. Historiography in these countries, particularly in Poland, has been characterized by a strong inter-disciplinary tradition of research on material culture since the 1950s, without, however, incorporating these two new theories.

Arno Strohmeyer
Cultural transfer through diplomacy: The Imperial Ambassadors in Spain in the Era of Philip II and the Making of the Habsburg Monarchy (1560-1598)

The Imperial ambassadors, resident at the Spanish court since 1560, were vehicles and intermediaries of a multifaceted cultural transfer, in the course of which cultural assets (material goods, political ideas, moral concepts, knowledge, etc.) were exchanged between Spain and the Imperial court. This process is examined with reference to the three main spheres of activity of diplomatic missions in the early modern era: political negotiations, the conveyance of exotic luxury goods, and the procurement of information. In this, it becomes clear that the cultural transfer was part of political modernisation and did not only contribute to intensified relations between the sovereign territories of the Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs, but also fostered state-building, political particularism and the division of the two dynastically tied territorial complexes.

Markus Völkel
„Romanic“- „Germanic“

Romanic-Germanic cannot be conceived in Early Modern Times as independent functional contrasts. But we can organize a multipolar field of descriptions embracing a zone of ‚absolute origins‘ of which Romanic-Germanic partake only in an indirect manner. Absolute ‚Germanity‘ is restricted to the exposition of the Germania of Tacitus and some theorists of primitive language. ‚Romanity‘ – referring to the level of translatio imperii/studii – emerges as something like a clearance inside possible intercultural discourses. This function of a clearance gives us  licence to interrupt the chain of causality: take translatio studii from Greece to the Germans for granted but leave out the Romans as mediators. In a general view the opposition Romanic-Germanic can be traced back to the structural elements of the language used in the 16th and 17th century. Therefore the opposition can be expressed by the classical four categories of  rhetorical variation: addition – adiectio, reduction – detractio, rearrangement – transmutatio, substitution – immutatio.

Zarka Vujic
Collecting in Sixteenth-Century Croatia in the Light of Erudition and Cultural Transfer

This essay deals with the history of collecting in the sixteenth-century Croatian scientific community. Approach to the topic is based on M. Foucault’s reasoning and forms of knowing. Among the rare collecting projects in the country worthy of mention was the „theatre of the world“ – the house of the Croatian poet P. Hektorovic. The garden-studiolo collecting schema was also found in the country houses near Dubrovnik. Due to the difficult social and economic conditions Croatian scientists chose the book as the primary medium of scientific exchange as well as of cultural transfer.

Wolfgang E.J. Weber
Commentary to Markus Völkel on „Romanic“ – „Germanic“

The commentator generally agrees to the chosen approach: history of concepts respectively discourses and history of ideas. He considers the argumentation developed on this basis to be as consistent as convincing. He emphatically welcomes that fact that with this article the importance of European rhetorical education of the secular and clerical elites as essential basis for Europe’s cultural transfer is worked out for the first time. He appreciates the author’s introduction of four rhetorical categories of change which mark structures and processes of relation and transfer. For him these innovations are of great value not only with regard to the case under discussion, but also for the research on cultural transfer in general. However, concerning the criteria of the selection of the sources, he would have expected him to be more explicit. Furthermore, from his point of view, social-historical, political-historical and more general cultural-historical supplements and intensifications would have been needed or at least useful.

Cornel A. Zwierlein
Comparative History of Communication and Cultural Transfer in the 16th Century: Some methodological remarks with regard to German and Italian communication about the French Wars of Religion (1559-1598)

The article sets out by presenting the various current concepts of ‚cultural transfer‘ in historical research. It goes on to refute two frequent propositions – that ‚cultural transfer‘ is independent from and superior to historical comparatism and that the application of this concept should be limited to the period after 1800. In order to arrive at a more precise understanding, two historical phenomena are analyzed: Firstly, the information systems of two medium-sized territories in the sixteenth century – the duchies of Pfalz-Neuburg in Germany and of Urbino in Italy – are compared with a view to their information flow about French current affairs during the Wars of Religion (especially the murder of the Guise 1588). According to the usual definition, ‚cultural transfer‘ takes place whenever something (here: information) travels between countries, the transferred object being, as a rule, altered in the process. However, roughly the same definition is usually applied by constructivists to the concept of communication itself. Thus every act of communication (reading, conversation etc.) would have to be termed cultural transfer. This article therefore proposes a more narrow definition by drawing, secondly, on the Reformation process in the Electoral Palatinate (1559-1563) with its transfer of French-influenced semantics and norms into the indigenous church system: Only in cases where the extraneous is (re-)constructed to become part of the operational functions of the indigenous social system – and not in cases where the foreign remains at the level of pure communication topics – should the term of ‚cultural transfer‘ be applied.

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