In the sign of Goethe? German myths, presences and experiences in the Eternal City

CYCLE: An International Capital: Rome and Foreigners
SPEAKER: Martin Baumeister, Director of the German Historical Institute in Rome
DATE: Thursday 13 June, 6 pm 
 
Like many other foreign communities, the Germans also maintain a special relationship with Rome, the 'eternal city' capable of stimulating intense relationships, full of emotions and expectations, like no other urban reality abroad. The conference therefore aims at reconstructing the journey that the Germans have experienced over the last two hundred years with a city not only imagined, represented, studied, but also lived in and even occupied. Passing ideally through places that bear witness to the German presence in the Urbe, often almost forgotten today, the gaze will be analysed, a gaze that although changing at the pace of more general changes seems to always bring back the same stereotypes. The Rome of the Germans is thus configured as a mirror of their desires and dreams, a large projection screen, a utopian place, but also a daily lived reality and an uninterrupted laboratory of humanistic studies. 

Martin Baumeister has been director of the German Historical Institute since 2012. Until 2017, he held the Chair of Contemporary European History at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. His current areas of research include Contemporary Southern European and Mediterranean History, Urban History and the History of Christianity.

Free admission subject to availability
Reservations at the link.