Empowerment and Representation at the University in Early Modern Germany: Helmstedt and Wurzburg, 1576-1634

Positioned within an emerging field of research on university representation, the study aims to fill a significant gap in a historiography which lacks an in-depth and systematic analysis of the image-fashioning process and its development at new universities in the early modern period. This study investigates the fashioning of public image in the formative years of new "territorial" universities, concentrating on the examples of Helmstedt and Wurzburg. The former serves as the main focus of this investigation and the latter as a comparative case. A range of public media are examined as sources in the assessment of the extent, forms, functions, and effects of representation as enacted in ritual, symbolic actions, occasional poetry, orations and publications, architecture, and printed image.