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Entangled in Virtuality – The Triggering Effect of Materialized History

Returning Materiality 

In recent years the engagement with materiality has gained increasing attention in history education in German speaking countries, surpassing the level of interest observed several decades ago. Notably, this development extends beyond the mere integration of material sources to history education in schools or museums (Must/Buchsteiner 2021). It also includes previously overlooked forms of historical representation and appropriation through objects as part of historical culture (Barsch/van Norden 2020; Mathis/Barsch 2022; Kühberger 2024a). In this context, ‘Geschichtsdinge’ (“materialized history”; literally “history things”) have come into sharper focus. These are understood as “various manifestations of historical culture that are inscribed either with a reference to the past or an interpretation of the past” (Kühberger 2023, 64). Examples include plastic Viking figurines, board games about the Ottoman Empire, toy sabers, or children’s books about Baroque princesses. In recent years, research in history education on the integration of such ‘Geschichtsdinge’ into the everyday lives of children and adolescents has prompted not only the exploration of various categories of toys (Kühberger 2021a; Erhard 2021), but also ethnographic studies on their availability and use in children’s play spaces (Kühberger 2021b; Kühberger 2024b; Kühberger 2025).

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Zur Materialität der historischen Quellen im Zeitalter der digitalen Edition

Ein Essay


Abstract

The essay discusses the consequence of digital methods in scholarly editing of historical sources. It comes to the following conclusions: Documents cannot be studied without taking the material features into account. Digital methods enable the editors to document those features relevant for the critical analysis of the source. The physical text bearing document is unique. It can never be reproduced but only referenced. Images, verbal descriptions, transcription and even more sophisticated reproduction techniques are only selective. In the digital edition the International Resource Identifier (IRI) of the semantic web is the best way to represent the original. Verbal descriptions have their own right against digital images and analysis methods of material science. Images are the cheapest way of editing, as they convey much information although not accessible for people lacking the necessary palaeographical skills. But computers can extract information from images, too. Verbal description needs controlled vocabularies to create machine readable versions of the human readable editions.

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Der Körper als Schnittstelle von Materialität und Virtualität

 

Christina Antenhofer befasst sich in ihren Arbeiten mit Mensch-Objekt-Beziehungen im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance sowie mit Digital Cultural Heritage. Hier reflektiert sie über Körper, Materialität und Virtualität.


Der Körper spielt eine zentrale Rolle für Fragen der Virtualität und Materialität. Merleau-Ponty (1966) sah den Körper des Menschen, insbesondere die sinnliche Wahrnehmung, als vermittelnde Instanz zwischen den Konzepten Materialität und Virtualität. Dualismen wie Leib und Seele, Kopf und Hand, Geist und Körper verdeutlichen die eng im Körper angelegte Spannung zwischen materiellen und sozialen Aspekten. Sie verweist auf ein grundlegendes Wechselspiel zwischen materiellen und immateriellen Gegebenheiten, das historisch unterschiedlich benannt wurde. In den aktuellen Debatten übersetzen sich diese meist in die Gegenüberstellung zwischen materiell und digital oder weiter gefasst virtuell. Körper sind dabei weder vorsozial noch natürlich gegeben, sondern vergesellschaftet. Sie sind Zeichenträger, diskursiv geformt, historisch bedingt. Wie Körper definiert und verstanden werden, ist somit kontextabhängig. Der Körper lässt sich zudem nicht als ein Ganzes verstehen, sondern als eine komplexe Konfiguration (Mol 2002). Stuart Hall betrachtet den Körper als eine Art Naht, die das fragmentierte postmoderne Subjekt über eine Positionierung in Ort und Zeit zusammenhält (Hall 1996: 11; Cranny-Francis et al. 2003: 91).

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Virtualizing Hell

Invited by the IMAREAL, the specialist in German literature and theater studies Matthias Däumer has been working since November 2022 on a research program that deals with Medieval German-language afterlife journeys and their forms of reception in the courtly novel. His focus is broad and includes theories of space and perception as well as the possibility of describing the literarily depicted afterlife experiences as preliminary stages of the perception of virtual reality. 

Is there a virtuality avant la lettre? And how would one think about it in the Middle Ages?

This systematic project intertwines with several projects at IMAREAL that observe comparable interactions on the basis of medieval artworks and thus provide indications that virtuality did not first enter the world with postmodernism. The same applies to the sensory stimulus (sensing), which virtually takes place not because of the material, but because of its simulation.