Visualizing the Past

Book excerpt: Visual media had a decisive impact on how the past was perceived in historicist culture in nineteenth-century Germany. The panorama, photography, and book illustrations can portray the past under the auspices of spatiality. Research on historicist culture often neglects this dimension of space and concentrates on traditional historicist paradigms, such as temporality, narrative, and teleology. By investigating the visual vocabulary of different historicist genres (academic historiography, illustrated history books, historical maps), this volume expands an understanding of German historicist culture as a multi-medial phenomenon, and shows that past is conveyed in spatial forms, such as travel locations, national and colonial spaces, as well as geographical areas. Tracing these concepts of historical space, this volume demonstrates that the image works as a powerful tool to propagate the ideology of German imperialism in the nineteenth-century, but also can critically reflect the political agendas of national historicism.