Death at Court

Since the early 1980s, studies of numerous aspects concerning rulers, their courts and residences, have become an integral part of Medieval research. This renewed interest has been particularly stimulated by the Residenzen-Projekt based at the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen (of which the organizer of the present conference is a member), which is due to expire next year. Conferences organized by this institution had, quite naturally, a particular focus on the Reich, while its European neighbours have also, though rather less frequently, received some attention. Only a single conference, however, entitled ‘Das Gehäuse der Macht. Der Raum der Herrschaft im interkulturellen Vergleich. Antike, Mittelalter, Frühe Neuzeit’ as part of the German Historikertag held in Kiel in 2004, has applied a specific intercultural and comparative approach.
The upcoming conference, for its part, is not only concerned with a comparative approach to European court culture, but aims at a more global perspective. Thus, it continues the work of the Court Culture Group, which was very recently founded almost exclusively by American scholars, but which can since claim a worldwide membership. A volume of conference proceedings (‘Rhetoric and the Discourses of Power in Court Culture: China, Europe and Japan’) has been published in 2005 as part of this work and a second conference was organized in Coburg in 2006, entitled ‘Courts as Symbolic Systems and Forms of Communication’.