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ePaper created 2014-10-06, 17:11:00 | version 1.33.00
Napoleon is tired, and so is his mule. A soldier leads them both through the icy mountain range. The bitter-cold wind lashes them in the face. One false step on the steep, snow-covered path will send the troop plummeting into the depths. The great military leader and emperor suddenly doesn’t seem that great anymore. He gazes wearily at the observer. His back is bent, his shoulders slumped. Is this what a hero looks like? The French artist Paul Delaroche portrays Napoleon as a man crossing the Alps at the Great St. Bernard Pass with difficulty, not as a superman – in contrast to the famous propaganda painting by Jacques-Louis David: The historical painter depicts Napoleon in superhuman dimen- sions – strong, iron-willed, resolute. The horse is bursting with energy, the rider pulling on the reins and pointing the way onward. “What Napoleon himself says is less important than how people talk about him.” What actually happened in May 1800 is that Napoleon crossed Europe’s largest mountain range with his army on his second Italian campaign and went on to defeat the Austrians at the Battle of Marengo. How is it that two painters stage the same event in such different ways? Which of the two paintings does justice to the legendary ruler? The answer to these questions doesn’t depend merely on the event itself but on who wanted to send what message at what point in time, stress Prof. Dr. Jörn Leonhard and his assistant Benjamin Marquart, historians at the collaborative research center 948, “Heroes – Heroisations – Heroisms: Transformations and Trends from Antiquity to the Modern Age.” The center, which is scheduled to run for twelve years, brings together scholars from various disciplines. They conduct research on rulers and saints, gods and demigods, workers, soldiers, citizens, and politicians. They want to find out when, how, and why a society produces heroes and what function they fulfill in their social and cultural environment, because one thing is clear: Heroes are not born but made, and people need to talk, write, and argue about them. Genius, Great Man, and More The two historians are studying so-called Bonapartism as a political hero narrative of the 19th century in Germany, France, and Great Britain. “Quite a diffuse phenomenon,” they admit. Not even contemporaries could agree on what to understand under the term. “What most of the definitions boil down to is that it is a political pro- gram,” says Marquart, “whatever its orientation might have been.” The key point, however, is that the researchers want to break away from the traditional understanding of the term and the figure Napoleon. “What Napoleon himself says is less important than how people talk about him,” stresses Marquart. The historian is thus concentrating on the time after 1821, the year of One event, two images: The French artist Paul Delaroche portrays Napoleon as a man crossing the Alps at the Great St. Bernard Pass with difficulty, not as a superman (left). The French historical painter Jacques-Louis David, on the other hand, depicts the emperor as a resolute hero in superhuman dimensions (right). Source: both Wikipedia Commons 17