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