"How can it be that I meet up with my best friends to punch them in the nose?" Nils Baratella is a doctoral student in the "Self-formations" research training group. His topic: boxing. Ines Weber, who is researching bishops, is quite different. A portrait.
By Mark Brüggemann
Nils Baratella came across his dissertation topic one day when he was thinking about his hobby, boxing. He has been stepping into the ring more or less regularly for ten years. "How can it be that I meet up with my best friends every evening to punch them in the nose?" Baratella asked himself. The former philosophy student at the Free University of Berlin quickly found an answer for himself: "I also like the intellectual exchange with people who offer me a surface to attack." According to Baratella, boxing also offers this open dialogue: "It's not just about knocking the other person out. Boxing matches are also a form of physical confrontation in which you learn more about a person than just through language."
Fighting as a narrative of modernity
What does boxing tell us about modern societies' understanding of violence and the body - and how has this developed? Baratella has been working on these research questions since he was accepted as a doctoral candidate in the "Self-Formations" research training group in 2010. How does his dissertation project fit into the overarching theme of subjectivisation? "There is a philosophical line in modernity according to which the subject and its existence are understood as a struggle," explains Baratella, referring to the theories of Hegel, Nietzsche and Foucault. "To a certain extent, the struggle can be understood as the narrative of modernity." This also includes the fight of the subject against itself - represented in the ring as overcoming one's own half-naked body after decisive hits.
According to Baratella, the boxing ring is an exceptional social space, the fight a staging that deals with violence in a way that is prototypical of the respective society. "With its ethos of fair play and masculinity, boxing provided a social ideal for how conflicts should be resolved in the modern age," he says. This was not always the case: In the first modern boxing matches, there was no limit to the number of rounds - opponents simply punched each other in the face until one fell over. Up until the 1920s, boxers who were knocked down were allowed to be punched again as soon as they got up. "The increasing regimentation gave the sport its specific aesthetic and at the same time changed boxing's image of humanity," explains Baratella. "No longer was everything done to defeat the other person."
According to Baratella, from the 1920s to the 1970s, boxing was one of the prominent spaces in which society dealt with violence and fighting. Legendary fights such as the one between Muhammad Ali and the recently deceased Joe Frazier are still present in the collective memory decades later. "Today, on the other hand, boxing no longer plays such a central role in European and North American culture - unlike in Mexico and South America, for example," says Baratella. In Europe, other sports are becoming increasingly important. However, even in the heyday of boxing, combat sports were seen as a marginal social phenomenon - wrongly, as Baratella argues with Foucault: "Looking from the margins, you learn more about society than if you are at the centre."
Nils Baratella's thesis is being supervised by Oldenburg philosopher Prof Dr Johann Kreuzer and Prof Dr Gunter Gebauer from the Free University of Berlin. The doctoral candidate continues to use his time in Berlin to train at a boxing club on Potsdamer Straße. The focus is on having fun, says Baratella, and he occasionally spars when someone from the boxing club is preparing for a competition. Baratella has no role models for his own fighting style, but he does have boxers he particularly appreciates: "The Sinto Johann Trollmann was an impressive personality." Having become German light heavyweight champion in 1933, Trollmann was the subject of racist mockery by the National Socialist media and was murdered in Neuengamme concentration camp in 1944. In addition to Trollmann, Baratella is particularly impressed by the boxing legend Rocky Marciano: "I like the classic story of the Italian immigrant's son who boxes his way to the top."
"No sports" - at least for bishops
Sport also plays a role in Ines Weber's doctoral project on subjectivisation - albeit only marginally. He was "soon superior, soon inferior", according to a medieval chronicle about Archbishop Balduin of Luxembourg of Trier, who held the office from 1307 to 1354. He was supposedly "the most cheerful companion when jumping, light-footed when running; he threw the stone further than the others and surpassed them in physical strength". Are we talking about a sprightly elderly gentleman taking the sports badge? Not at all. The passage quoted from the Gestis Baldewini ("Deeds of Balduin") provides an insight into the beginning of Balduin's term of office, when he was appointed archbishop at the age of 21. Balduin's enthusiasm for "sport" did not seem to be entirely compatible with his church office. According to the chronicler, the archbishop preceded such entertainment with the formula "Let's hang the episcopal dignity on the wall!".
Ines Weber found the quote from the Gestis Baldewini so interesting that she used this inspiration to develop a doctoral project for the Research Training Group with the historian Prof. Dr Rudolf Holbach. "(Self-)Education of Late Medieval Bishops in the Holy Roman Empire in Comparison" is the working title of her dissertation. "In addition to Balduin, I want to look at several other bishops from the period from around 1250 to 1550," says Weber, who is a member of the new cohort of the programme. "How did the respective person 'form' themselves into their office and then embody it?" is the central research question of the 26-year-old, who completed her Master's degree in European History in Oldenburg. According to Weber, the "self-education" of late medieval bishops included very different aspects: Education and religious background, social networking, dress and lifestyle, interests and activities. What qualifications did the bishops have? What is compatible with the dignity of their office and what is not? Who are they compared to in the chronicles? Weber's work aims to answer these and other questions.
Ecclesiastical leader and secular sovereign
Ines Weber sees a particular attraction of her dissertation topic in working out structural differences in the dioceses of the Holy Roman Empire: "There were dioceses in which the local nobility had a strong position, but also those in which the free townspeople played the decisive role." As a result, very different expectations were placed on the office of bishop, to which it was necessary to respond. The bishops also acted in a very special "field of tension", as they were both the ecclesiastical head of the diocese and secular sovereigns. The expectations of "society" and those of the bishop himself did not always coincide: The Hamburg merchant's son Hinrich Biscop (1315-1381), for example, ruthlessly and stubbornly strove for the episcopal dignity until it was finally granted to him in 1370. Fraud and corruption were just as much a part of his understanding of his office as a sumptuous life at the expense of the diocese - much to the displeasure of those around him.
Weber specialised in the history of the Middle Ages during her studies, with her master's thesis focusing on religious houses in medieval Friesland. Dr Antje Sander, director of the Jever Castle Museum, found the work so well-founded that she entrusted Weber with the conception of a permanent exhibition on the medieval Johanniterkapelle Bokelesch (municipality of Saterland). With the three-year graduate scholarship, the East Frisian from Wiesmoor is now returning from exhibition practice to academia. "The programme of the fellowship is really promising: on the one hand, you take part in subject-specific colloquia, but you are also not left alone with interdisciplinary questions," says Weber, looking forward to the exchange with the fellows and academic supervisors.