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Cultural depictions of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor

Portrait of Emperor Maximilian I by Albrecht Dürer, 1519, in the last year of his life, holding his personal emblem, a pomegranate.

Maximilian I (22 March 1459 – 12 January 1519) was Holy Roman Emperor from 1508 until his death.

Maximilian was an ambitious leader who was active in many fields and lived in a time of great upheaval between the Medieval and Early Modern worlds. Maximilian's reputation in historiography is many-sided, often contradictory: the last knight or the first modern foot soldier and "first cannoneer of his nation";[1][2] the first Renaissance prince (understood either as a Machiavellian politician[3] or omnicompetent, universal genius[4]) or a dilettante;[5] a far-sighted state builder and reformer, or an unrealistic schemer whose posthumous successes were based on luck,[6] or a clear-headed, prudent statesman.[7] While Austrian researchers often emphasize his role as the founder of the early modern supremacy of the House of Habsburg or founder of the nation,[8] debates on Maximilian's political activities in Germany as well as international scholarship on his reign as Holy Roman Emperor often centre on the Imperial Reform. In the Burgundian Low Countries (and the modern Netherlands and Belgium), in scholarly circles as well as popular imagination, his depictions vary as well: a foreign tyrant who imposed wars, taxes, high-handed methods of ruling and suspicious personal agenda, and then "abandoned" the Low Countries after gaining the imperial throne, or a saviour and builder of the early modern state. Jelle Haemers calls the relationship between the Low Countries and Maximilian "a troubled marriage".[9][10]

In his lifetime, as the first ruler who exploited the propaganda potential of the printing press,[11] he attempted to control his own depictions, although various projects (called Gedechtnus) that he commissioned (and authored in part by him in some cases) were only finished after his death. Various authors refer to the emperor's image-building programs as "unprecedented".[12][13][14] Historian Thomas Brady Jr. remarks that Maximilian's humanists, artists, and printers "created for him a virtual royal self of hitherto unimagined quality and intensity. They half-captured and half-invented a rich past, which progressed from ancient Rome through the line of Charlemagne to the glory of the house of Habsburg and culminated in Maximilian's own high presidency of the Christian brotherhood of warrior-kings."[15]

Additionally, as his legends have many spontaneous sources, the Gedechtnus projects themselves are just one of the many tributaries of the early modern Maximiliana stream. Today, according to Elaine C.Tennant, it is impossible to determine the degree modern attention and reception to Maximilian (what Tennant dubs "the Maximilian industry") are influenced by the self-advertising program the emperor set in motion 500 years ago.[16] According to historian Thomas Martin Lindsay, the scholars and artists in service of the emperor could not expect much financial rewards or prestigious offices, but just like the peasantry, they genuinely loved the emperor for his romanticism, amazing intellectual versatility and other qualities. Thus, he "lives in the folk-song of Germany like no other ruler does."[17] Maximilian Krüger remarks that, although the most known of all Habsburgs, and a ruler so markedly different from all who came before him and his contemporaries, Maximilian's reputation is fading outside of the scientific ivory tower, due to general problems within German education and a culture self-defined as post-heroic and post-national.[18]

  1. ^ Pieper, Dietmar; Saltzwedel, Johannes (3 May 2010). Die Welt der Habsburger: Glanz und Tragik eines europäischen Herrscherhauses (in German). DVA. p. 53. ISBN 978-3-641-04162-5. Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  2. ^ Westervelt, William O. (1980). Austria, Its People and Culture. National Textbook Company. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-8442-9520-6. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  3. ^ Berenger & Simpson 2014, p. 120.
  4. ^ "Gneiß, Markus – alle Bücher Online". Buch findR (in German). Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  5. ^ Müller, Jan-Dirk. "Kaiser Maximilian I." De Gruyter. Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  6. ^ Rady, Martyn (12 May 2020). The Habsburgs: The Rise and Fall of a World Power. Penguin Books Limited. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-14-198719-4. Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  7. ^ Angermeier, Heinz (19 May 2015). Das alte Reich in der deutschen Geschichte: Studien über Kontinuitäten und Zäsuren (in German). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. pp. 235–243. ISBN 978-3-486-82774-3. Retrieved 3 June 2022.
  8. ^ Brady, Thomas A. (1998). Communities, Politics, and Reformation in Early Modern Europe. BRILL. p. 331. ISBN 978-90-04-11001-4. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  9. ^ Haemers, Jelle (2020). "Het beleg van Gent, de bouw van het Rabot en de vergelding van Maximiliaan (1488–1492). Een studie over het politieke gebruik van ruimte en militaire bouwplannen in de laatmiddeleeuwse stad". HMGOG (74): 3. Retrieved 24 March 2022.[permanent dead link‍]
  10. ^ Cammaerts, Emile (1921). Belgium from the Roman Invasion to the Present Day. T. F. Unwin Limited. p. 143. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
  11. ^ Spangenberg, Kristin L., ed. (1993). Six Centuries of Master Prints: Treasures from the Herbert Greer French Collection. Cincinnati Art Museum. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-931537-15-8. Retrieved 20 January 2022.
  12. ^ Asch, Ronald G. (1991). Princes, Patronage, and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450–1650. German Historical Institute London. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-19-920502-8. Retrieved 2 February 2022.
  13. ^ Munck, Bert De; Romano, Antonella (20 August 2019). Knowledge and the Early Modern City: A History of Entanglements. Routledge. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-429-80843-2. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
  14. ^ Hayton 2015, p. 13.
  15. ^ Brady, Thomas A.; Brady, Thomas A. Jr. (13 July 2009). German Histories in the Age of Reformations, 1400–1650. Cambridge University Press. p. 128. ISBN 978-0-521-88909-4. Retrieved 20 January 2022.
  16. ^ Tennant, Elaine C. (27 May 2015). "Productive Reception: Theuerdank in the Sixteenth Century". Maximilians Ruhmeswerk. p. 341. doi:10.1515/9783110351026-013. ISBN 978-3-11-034403-5. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
  17. ^ Lindsay, Thomas Martin (1909). A History of the Reformation. T. & T. Clark. p. 67. Retrieved 23 January 2022.
  18. ^ Krüger, Maximilian. "Rezension: Frenzel, Monika; Gepp, Christian; Wimmer, Markus (Hrsg.): Maximilian 1. Aufbruch in die Neuzeit. Innsbruck: Haymon. ISBN 978-3-7099-3462-3" [Review: Frenzel, Monika; Gepp, Christian; Wimmer, Markus (eds.): Maximilian 1. The dawn of modern times. Innsbruck: Haymon. ISBN 978-3-7099-3462-3]. H / Soz / Kult (in German). Retrieved 23 January 2022.

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