Page - 22 - in Die Repräsentation der Habsburg-Lothringischen Dynastie in Musik, visuellen Medien und Architektur - 1618–1918

22 Sektion I: Themen und Medien der Repräsentation that imperial dynasty is inextricably bound into the history of that place. Although the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty was an internationally significant political entity and the phenomenon of their influence is therefore pan-European, nowhere is Habsburg impact more tangible than in Vienna. Likewise no European city has linked so much of its modern cultural prestige to the critical fortunes of its past. To see this, one need only walk around the First District to the Hofburg, the Augustinerkirche, the Stephansdom, the Kapuzinergruft, the ‘alte Universität’, or take a short U-Bahn ride out of the First District to visit Schloss Schönbrunn. And if those buildings were not proof enough, the city’s museums are filled with the material legacy of Vienna’s past: objects that likewise narrate moments in the Habsburg-Lorraine story and provide starting points from which a broader sense of its cultural history can emerge.1 The challenge for scholars is to formulate methods for understanding this massive cultural inheritance, which can be extended to all of the arts: visual media, architec- ture, landscape, theater, dance and of course music. Finding a single framework from which to approach all of these diverse forms of cultural expression has not been easy. One large overarching framework can be derived out of a Marxist or sociohistor- ical approach, one that understands Habsburg representation through concepts of class, control of means of production, and economics. Certainly wealth is part of the Habsburg-Lorraine story, although their continual struggles with finances are likewise a major component of their dynastic history. High status necessitated the display of power through ceremony achieved by commissioning impressive works of art, producing grand musical and theatrical spectacles, and occupying architectural spaces of impressive beauty. Such actions were demanded of elites as a condition of their status, and indeed were used to differentiate socially among them. Norbert Elias demonstrated this for the French setting, and Hubert Ehalt later applied it to the Habsburgs in his classic study Ausdrucksformen absolutistischer Herrschaft.2 Wealth and power, as components of rule, relied heavily on the arts to convey social distinc- tions and create impressions of difference through luxury. This approach is widespread especially in European scholarship on royal represen- tation. Another approach for assessing Habsburg-Lorraine cultural influence would approach the idea of representation more in its English-language sense, one slightly different from the German meaning of Repräsentation. Studies of representation in this scholarly perspective are concerned with the formation of images: the ways in which an ideal is created in pictures. For the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, we can think of representation as a process of creating perfected images of its members, ideal perceptions of power and influence, and ideal sources of influence and authority. When Empress Elisabeth of Bavaria (‘Sisi’) appears in a portrait wearing a fashion- able costume, she creates an ideal as understood within the requirements of royal