Schriften zur politischen Kommunikation.

The kingdoms of Bithynia, Pontus and Cappadocia lay at the borders of the ancient Hellenistic world. In contrast to the larger kingdoms of that time, they were not under the dominance of the Macedonian, but rather of indigenous dynasties. This situation allows us to take a new look at the oft-discussed question of how the spread of Hellenism took place. This study considers the conditions under which cultural contacts occurred in this region. The central emphasis lies in the role of the indigenous kings, who, it is said, purposefully spread Greek culture in their own empires. Although certain aspects of the representation of the kings to a public shaped by Greek norms and values may be considered philhellenism, it must still be pointed out that these kings were only reacting to an already existing system of representing authority. To deduce from that an intentional Hellenistic assimilation toward their indigenous subjects remains problematic. This is a German text.

This volume is concerned with the positions taken in the present debate over a new history of politics, or a cultural history of political thought. The European position toward that debate emphasizes the usefulness of bringing the discussion to an international forum, since it is not the replacing of one research approach by another, but rather the complementing of existing research methods by those stemming from historical semantics which has proved to be feasible and open to new research questions. The contributions in this volume treat the issue both from the vantage point of early modern oppositional discourses as well as of the early history of nobility. They concentrate on the role of rituals in the history of the Middle Ages and in modern historical treatments. This is the first volume of a series from the International Graduate College entitled Political Communication from Antiquity to the 20th Century . This text is in German.