2 March 2022
This project examines the large-scale theatre exhibitions in Vienna, 1892, Berlin, 1910, and Magdeburg, 1927, as spaces of experimentation, propagation and constitution for the German-speaking humanities. As “playgrounds” where disciplines of the humanities could conceptualize and showcase themselves using different media, they became important spaces for the production and reception of scholarly knowledge around 1900. Along these three exhibitions, I trace a history of the German-speaking humanities that goes beyond purely academic practices and institutional developments. In my post-disciplinary analysis, that history was shaped by both scholarly and popular cultures, new media, and established exhibition practices. The media of the theatre exhibitions were characterized by their materiality and visuality and included the new media of film and radio. In this respect, they contrasted with the written and spoken, clearly “intellectual” media that dominated the academic sphere and the self-conception of the German Geisteswissenschaften.
Lotte Schüßler is a research associate at the Institute of Theatre Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a BA and an MA in theatre studies from Freie Universität Berlin and completed her doctoral studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2020. Her thesis, Theaterausstellungen. Spielräume der Geisteswissenschaften um 1900 (Theatre Exhibitions: Playgrounds of the Humanities around 1900), will be published by Wallstein in 2022. Currently, she is also working on a project about the use and reuse of paper in the history of the humanities.