PhD Student Elisabeth Charlotte Caroline Osing
Contact Information
Elisabeth Charlotte Caroline Osing M.A.
Marstallstraße 6, Room 414
D-69117 Heidelberg
Germany
Email address: elisabeth.osing@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de
About
Elisabeth Osing is a PhD Candidate at the Chair for Early Modern History at the University of Heidelberg and Doctoral Research Fellow in the Research Project „The Aggressor“. She studied History and Philosophy at the University of Potsdam during her undergraduate degree. She completed her Master’s degree in History at the University of Heidelberg and the Trinity College Dublin.
Research Interests
- History of Historiography in Europe
- Enemy images and polemical writing in the Early Modern Period
- Republic of Letters
- Early Enlightenment
- Cultural History of War and Violence, esp. in the Nine Years War (1688–1697)
- Climate and Environmental History
- History of Knowledge (Wissensgeschichte)
- Theories and Methods for modern Historiography (Geschichtswissenschaft)
Doctoral Project
The personified enemy image of Attila, king of the Huns, in German, English, Italian and French historiography and political conflict (late 15th century to late 19th century)
Attila, king of the Huns, is one of the most prominent examples of historical aggression and brutal warfare. This PhD project argues that this image of the „cruel king of the Huns“ was exploited to depict other historical figures as aggressors. Its aim is to compare the depiction of Attila as personified religious or national enemy in German, English, Italian and French historiography, and its exploitation in political and religious polemic from late 15th century into the late 19th century. To identify transmission processes between scholarly historiographical discourse and the more public sphere of hostile communication, history books and chronicles are examined as well as pamphlets and popular narratives. Attila was interpreted as an intrinsically cruel and destructive enemy of a national, religious or ethnic community in Western European historiography. These popular interpretations of Attila as a „historical aggressor“ prevailed in many Western European communities and were thus available for labeling other historical figures as aggressors. Therefore, the PhD project investigates how the established negative interpretation of Attila was transferred to other historical figures in order to characterize them as aggressors as well. For example, the Ottoman ruler Suleyman I, the French King Louis XIV and the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck were referred to as „Attila“ by their contemporary adversaries. As a result of this transmission process, they and their respective communities were accused of inhuman cruelty, greed, and aggression towards their enemies. However, the examination of the polemical writings does not focus on the personified community portrayed as the aggressor, but rather on the question of how historical images of the aggressor are used for this portrayal. Ultimately, the PhD project examines the link between historiography and polemical writing in times of political conflict in Early Modern and 19th century Europe.
