The international research network on „Military, War, and Gender/Diversity“ (MKGD): MKGD Online Research Colloquium (Web)
Time: Mo., 16.06.2025, 4:00-6:00 pm (CET)
Venue: virtual space (Web)
The monthly colloquium of the research network „Military, War, and Gender/Diversity“ (known by its German acronym MKGD) continues in the this summer semester. The recently enlarged team of organizers is very much looking forward to welcoming you online! (Web)
Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger: Der König und 80.000 Mätressen: Zur Biographie Friedrich Wilhelms I. in geschlechtergeschichtlicher Perspektive
Frederick William I’s relationship with his army was considered bizarre by his contemporaries. His wife sarcastically called his soldiers his “mistresses”. It was the masculine, woman-despising habit of violence of a sergeant that the king made into the new hegemonic ideal of masculinity, albeit paired with pious moral strictness. Both – his relationship to women and to the army – represented a radical break with what was customary at the European courts. Yet, it was precisely these obsessions, which his contemporaries noted with extreme astonishment, that were credited to him as virtues by later historians. The lecture explores the question of what a biography of this royal outsider can contribute to the history of the military, physicality and gender relations. (Presentation in German.)
Moderation: Marian Füssel (Georg August Univ. Göttingen)
Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger has been Rector of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin since 2018 and previously taught early modern history at the Univ. of Münster. Her main areas of research are the cultural history of the political, early modern rituals and symbols, practices and procedures. Her most recent publications are: Maria Theresa: The Habsburg Empress in Her Time (Princeton UP, 2022); Tyrannen: Eine Geschichte von Caligula bis Putin, ed. with André Krischer (C.H. Beck, 2022).
Full programme of the colloquium (Web)

The ERC StG WE-COOP Research Project
Neues Veranstaltungsformat des Forschungsschwerpunktes Frauen*- und Geschlechtergeschichte der Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Univ. Wien