Aggressors: The Construction of National Enemy Images in Europe

Ladenburg, February 26–28, 2024

February 26, 2024

13:30 – 13:45
• Prof. Dr Lutz Gade/Dr. Jörg Klein – Welcome Address

13:45–14:30
• Prof. Dr. Thomas Maissen – Self-Perception and External Perception of an Aggressor: The Paradigmatic Case of Napoleon

14:30 – 16:00 Panel 1. Aggressors in Museums
Chair: Prof. Dr. Ilaria Porciani
• Prof. Dr. Dominique Poulot – Louis XIV in Museums: The Modalities and Challenges of Curating the History of Violences
• Prof. Dr. Alexandra Bounia – The Absence of a Personified Aggressor in Historical Museums
• Prof. Dr. Ilaria Porciani – Commentary

16:00 – 16:30 Coffee Break

16:30 – 18:00 Panel 2. Aggressor Memories across Media
Chair: PD Dr. Ivan Sablin
• Prof. Dr. Cord Arendes – “The Aggressor ‘Light’? Internet Memes as Form of Communication in Popular Culture”
• Philipp-Thomas Wehage – Overcoming the Aggressor with Ease? Considerations between Aggression, Play, and Cultural Studies
• Dr. Katharina Friege – The Hitler Taboo: Laughing at the Führer in Popular Film and Television, 1940–2015

18:15 – 19:30 Roundtable. “Our Favorite Enemies”: Towards a Comparative and Transnational Study of Aggressor Images in Central and Eastern European Historical Cultures
Chair: Prof. Dr. Thomas Maissen
• Prof. Dr. Diana Mishkova
• Prof. Dr. Balasz Trencsenyi
• Prof. Dr. Tanja Penter
• Prof. Dr. Marek Tamm

20:00 – Dinner

February 27, 2024
9:00 – 11:00 Panel 3. Premodern and Modern Aggressors
Chair: Prof. Dr. Diana Mishkova
• Dr. Stamatia Fotiadou – Unraveling Basil II the Bulgar-Slayer: Multifaceted Perspectives on the Byzantine Emperor
• Prof. Dr. Anti Selart – Ivan the Terrible: The Rehabilitation of an Aggressor
• Benedek Marton Vasy – Cromwell, William III and Beyond: A Comparison of Secondary School History Textbook Narratives across England, Ireland, and Northern Ireland
• Dr. Maciej Górny – The Disappearing Giants: Muravyov the Hangman and Beast Butler

11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 – 13:30 Panel 4. The Nineteenth Century
Chair: Prof. Dr. Thomas Maissen
• Dominik Szczęsny-Kostanecki – Between Justification and Condemnation: Polish Perceptions of Napoleon’s Invasion of Spain 1808–1813
• Dr. Piotr Kuligowski “A Lesson to All the Bad Kings”: The Perception of William I and Nicholas I in Belgian and Polish Parliamentary Discourses, 1830–31
• Prof. Dr. Luigi Cajani – Josef Radetzky through Austrian and Italian History Textbooks
• Dr. Andrew Mycock – Cecil Rhodes and the Imperial History Wars

13:30 – 14:30 Lunch

14:30 – 16:30 Panel 5. Interwar Aggressors
Chair Prof. Dr. Balazs Trencsenyi
• Prof. Dr. Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas – Napoleon and the Moors are Back! External Aggressors and National Narratives on the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1975
• Prof. Dr. Stefan Berger – Historiographical Nationalism in Interwar Europe: The Use of “Aggressors” in Comparative Perspective
• Prof. Dr. Nada Boškovska Leimgruber – Boris III: Aggressor or Liberator and Unifier? History Politics in the Balkans
• Dr. Martin Valkov – King Boris III of Bulgaria in the Competing Memory Discourses about the Holocaust

16:30 – 17:00 Coffee Break

17:00 – 18:30 Panel 6. Aggressors of the Second World War
Chair: Prof. Dr. Stefan Berger
• Prof. Dr. Martin Conway – The Male Enemy: Images of Men as the Aggressor in Europe in the era of the Second World War
• Prof. Dr. Efi Gazi – Perceptions and Images of Mussolini in 20th c. Greece
• Prof. Dr. Marja Jalava – The Convicted War Criminal as a Sacrificial Victim of the Nation: The Postwar Reception of the Former President of Finland Risto Ryti

19:30 – Dinner

February 28, 2024
9:00 – 11:00 Panel 7. Cold War Aggressors
Chair: Prof. Dr. Tanja Penter
• Prof. Dr. Corine Defrance – The Aggressor in the Cold War Using the Example of the Berlin Crises (1948/49, 1958/1961)
• Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch – “We Have to Pet the Tiger”: West German and International Perceptions and Reactions on Gaddafi
• Dr. Adéla Gjuričová and PD Dr. Ivan Sablin – Brezhnev in the Context of the Prague Spring and the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
• Prof. Dr. Chris Lorenz – All in the Family? On the Political and Historiographical Discourse on Soekarno in the Netherlands

11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30 – 13:30 Panel 8. Current Developments
Chair: PD Dr. Ivan Sablin
• Prof. Dr. Katja Makhotina – Stalin – “Father of Fatherlands” and People’s Henchman: The Mute Stories of the Repressed in Post-Soviet Russia
• Prof. Dr. Florian Bieber – New Narratives of Victimhood and Aggression during the Yugoslav Wars
• Daniel Weinmann – Aggressor Images of Digital Historical Propaganda in Putin’s Russia on YouTube
• Dr. Fatih Durgun – The Crusaders in Contemporary Memory: Diverse Representations of Saladin and Richard the Lionheart in the Age of Brexit and Religious Nationalisms