Conference Program: Bulwarks in a “Religious Triangle”. Borderland Myths in East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism

Tiffany N. Florvil Discussion

Bulwarks in a “Religious Triangle”. Borderland Myths in East European Multiconfessional Societies in the Age of Nationalism

International Conference, University of Münster, Germany, 15-16 May 2014

Organizers: Cluster of Excellence at the WWU Münster "Religion and politics"

and the Herder-Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe - Institute of the Leibniz-Association (Marburg) in cooperation with the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw) and the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (Edmonton)

History of frontier regions presents clashes and overlaps of socio-cultural and reli­gious formations. Often, it results in mutual influences, but sometimes it may also lead to harsh confrontations, or the occurrence of typical socio-cultural patterns not to be met elsewhere. Historically based boundaries between cultures, ethnic groups, and reli­gions influence various (and interdependent) debates about civili­zation and barbarism, religious missions and self-identifications with a role of “chosen people” (e.g. as de­fenders of faith or culture) in the region. Antemurale (bulwark) myths are the products of such discourses and thus aone specific phe­nomena of these regions. Their purpose is to demonstrate the belonging of a cer­tain group to the bigger community which is supposedly more “devel­oped”/”civilized” then the neighbor one(s). Such a legitimation and provides the society with orientation and sense by drawing imaginary boundaries within the denominationally and ethnically mixed borderland societies. As typical politi­cal myths, they help to explain the origins of the evolving nations.

 The concept of antemurale christianitatis was born in the 15th century and reached its peak during the anti-Osmanic wars in the 16th and 17th centuries. The sugges­tion of being a "bulwark" against the Muslim threat was widely spread in early modern Croatia, Hungary, Venice, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the lands of the Habsburg monarchy. From the very beginning, the (self)-definition of antemurale was mostly lim­ited to the Catholic lands. Territories dominated by the Eastern-rite believers, like Serbia, Muscovy, Rhodes, or Crete, were granted by the Holy See this title only with certain reservations. Although typical for the Chris­tian-Islamic border, antemurale myths can be found in the regions where different Christian confessions meet, too. Here, the extrapolation “civilization/barbarism” is often enriched with reflections about “true faith.” In this way the antemurale myth is used as a legitimation source for differ­ent kinds of missionary activities (religious, political, and cultural).

East European frontier zones are typical regions of the spread of antemurale myths. One of it is situated along the southern, south-western and western borders of the late Russian Empire, encompassing the lands of the modern Ukraine and the Black Sea region which had been contested since the antiquity and contributed to the growth of the Byzantine, Ottoman, Habsburg, and Russian Empires as multi-ethnic and multi-confessional communities. There, the logic of antemurale worked on both sides.

Since the 19th century, the mythic narration on "bulwarks" has undergone consid­erable changes, due to the rise of nationalism and the transformations of political borders. The antemurale myths experienced a revival: Old topoi of "chosen people" and the civiliza­tion/barbarism divide have remained intact, but the anti-Islamic was replaced sharply by an anti-Russian rhetoric. Political myths of antemurale, due to its semantic flexibility, turned to be essential elements of local national ideologies.

The planned conference aims at discovering the peculiarities of the antemurale rheto­ric’s application upon various national ideologies and respective “mental mapping.” But it seems more important to ask how the antemurale myth contrib­uted to the coherence of the given local community. Thus, one focus rests upon the longue durée processes in the national consciousness, from the end of the 18th century until the interwar period. A second one lies on a synchronic perspec­tive, which allows tracing mutual transfers as well as multi-sided national ideologi­cal competitions and the intertwining of mythical narrations.

As the organizers aim at a comparative view on antemurale myths, we invite ap­pro­xi­mately 20 experts to contribute to our discussion in form of a 25 min presen­tation. The papers should be organized according to at least one of the following sets of questions:

 · What were the specific features of the modern “bastion myths”? How do modern national “bulwark” myths relate to the old, pre-modern ones?

 · How did the changing political landscape and the loss of power of the empires in­fluence the mythical narration? How did the new pan-movement ideologies (i.e. Panslavism) influence transformations in the antemurale myths? Can we trace the influence of specific Romantic and messianic ideas and religious con­cepts on the formation of modern “bulwark” myths?

 · Were there any differences in mythic narration of antemurale on the Chris­tian/Islamic and Western Christian/Eastern Christian borders? Were there any dif­ferences in denominationally homogeneous and in mixed areas and can we find any specifically confessional facets of it?

 · How did the national “bulwark” myths correspond to other myths in the region (of the Golden Age, victim role, heroes, etc.)? Are there local nuances of the mythical nar­ration and can we thus assume specific ”core“ and ”peripheral“ per­spectives in the narratives about bulwarks which hint at a certain “colonial view”?

· Can we identify the major actors in these processes? Which role did the churches play? Was the antemurale myth implemented in the lower layers of the society? Can we trace certain modifications on its way “to the bottom” and vice versa? What were the most influential intermediaries in these processes?

Registration: till 2.05.2014 (lbere_01@uni-muenster.de)

 Program

 

15 May 2014, Thursday

9:00     Registration

9:15     Liliya Berezhnaya (Münster), Heidi Hein-Kircher (Marburg): Opening remarks

Antemurale Topos: ‘historical and political backgrounds’ (European and religious applications)

Moderation: Heidi Hein-Kircher

9:30-10:45

Kerstin Weiand (Frankfurt a.M.): Antemurale Concepts in Vatican Politics till the End of the 18th Century

Edward Opaliñski (Warsaw): The Function of the “Antemurale”-Notion in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the Turn of the 16th-17th Centuries

Discussion

Coffee break

Frontier mythology in Ukrainian historical and political discourses in the times of nationalism

Moderation: Liliya Berezhnaya

11:00-13:00

Volodymyr Kravchenko (Edmonton): Borderland into Heartland? Antemurale Mythology in Ukrainian historical Writing of the first half of the 19th century

Serhii Plokhii (Boston): Religion and Nation in Frontier Mythology: Re-reading the History of the Rus

Philipp Hofender (Wien): Some Remarks on the Antemurale Myth from a Galician Perspective. Polish and Ukrainian Schoolbooks from 1848 to 1918

Discussion

Lunch

“Mental mapping” in arts and music, cartography and travel guides. Part I

Moderation: Serhii Plokhii

14:30-16:00

Heidi Hein-Kircher (Marburg): The Bulwark Mission: Polish Travel Guides on Galicia and Lviv at the End of the 19th- the First Decades of 20th Century

Steven Seegel (Greeley, Colorado): Speaking in Maps: Spatially Rethinking East Central Europe's National Geographers

Discussion

Coffee Break

“Mental mapping” in arts and music, cartography and travel guides. Part II

16:20-17:45

Stephen Norris (Upham Hall, Ohio): Canvas Bulwarks: Art, Religion, and Nationhood in Late 19th century Eastern Europe

Izabela Œkierska (Warsaw): Antemurale-Vorstellungen auf der Basis eines Liedes: Zur Virulenz des “Bogurodzica”-Liedes im Laufe der Jahrhunderte

Discussion

Coffee break

18:15- 19:45

Keynote

Yves Bizeul (Rostock): Die Funktion des politischen Mythos in der Demokratie

20:00 Dinner

16 May 2014, Friday

Bastions of faith. Christian churches in the borderland societies. Part I

Moderation: Volodymyr Kravchenko

9:00–10:15

Paul Œrodecki (Gießen): Bullwarks of Anti-Bolshevism: The Roman Catholic Church in East Central Europe and the Antemurale Propaganda of the Interwar Years

Liliya Berezhnaya (Münster): Bastions of Faith in the Oceans of Ambiguities. Monasteries in the East European Borderlands (late 19th-beginning of the 20th centuries)

Discussion

Coffee Break

Bastions of faith. Christian churches in the borderland societies. Part II

10:35-11:50

Ciprian Ghisa (Cluj)/ Mihai Olaru (Budapest): The Uniate Church in Transylvania, the “true” Eastern Church and the Promoter of the “true” National Values

Natalia Shlichta (Kyiv): Knowing “the Other”: Ukrainian Greek Catholics' Views on the Russian Orthodoxy in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Discussion

Coffee break

Frontier mythology in conflict and counteraction with the Islamic and Jewish “other”

Moderation:  Alfred Sproede

12:15-14:15

Kerstin Jobst (Wien): Holy Ground. The (Re)Construction of an Orthodox Crimea in the 19th Century

Zaur Gasimov (Istanbul):  From Baku and Crimea to the Bosporus. Emigrés' Role in the Russian-Turkish intellectual Entanglement about Borderlands

Jürgen Heyde (Halle/Saale): The Walls of the Ghetto. Debates on Exclusion, Integration and Identity in Central Europe in the 19th and early 20th century

Discussion

Lunch snack

15:00 Liliya Berezhnaya: Concluding remarks

 

 Dr Liliya   Berezhnaya   Exzellenzcluster "Religion und Politik"   Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster   Johannisstrasse 1-4

Zi. 213   48143 Münster   Tel. +49 (0)251 8323537   Fax +49 (0)251 8323500

lbere_01@uni-muenster.de

http://www.uni-muenster.de/Religion-und-   Politik/personen/projekt/berezhnaya.html

Dr. Heidi Hein-Kircher   Abteilungsleitung Wissenschaftsforum   Herder-Institut   für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung –

Institut der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft   Gisonenweg 5-7   35037 Marburg   Tel. +49-6421-184-110

Fax. +49-6421-184-139

heidi.hein-kircher@herder-institut.de

www.herder-institut.de www.facebook.com/HerderInstitut