Friedrich Ludwig von Maydells Fünfzig Bilder aus der Geschichte der deutschen Ostsee-Provinzen Russlands: Zur Erforschung baltischer Geschichtsbilder
Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell’s Fünfzig Bilder aus der Geschichte der deutschen Ostsee-Provinzen Russlands: On the Research of Baltic Images of History

Summary/Abstract: In 1839 and 1842, the Baltic German artist Friedrich Ludwig von Maydell (1795-1846) published the first two volumes of his Fünfzig Bilder aus der Geschichte der deutschen Ostsee-Provinzen Russlands. This album not only contained the first images of the Baltic in history, but it was also one of the first instances of Romantic historicism in these lands and an early example of the uses of the past for constructing a specifically Baltic German identity. By analysing Maydell’s work, the article discusses the particularities of the Baltic German images of history in a regional as well as transnational context. Examining his visual representations of the past, it shows how the borderland’s historical memory was shaped by a variety of influences, including aspects of the Russian imperial historiographical tradition, as well as developments in the arts, historical discourse, and nationalism in Europe and Germany. The article also examines the transfer of visual motifs, thereby highlighting how the often competing and conflicting nineteenth-century nationalist histories were shaped by shared transnational schemata. Following this, it analyses the impact of the local colonial context on Maydell’s images of Baltic history and the afterlives of his images in the later Estonian and Latvian national images of history. Although much scholarship has focused on the contrasts and conflicts between the Baltic German and the Estonian and Latvian visions of the Baltic past, this article reveals the rival versions of the past to also be closely entangled. Visual culture can demonstrate this well, showing that Estonian and Latvian artists opposed their work to Maydell’s images, while also imitating and appropriating his style and motifs. Finally, Maydell’s own treatment of the local peoples and their folk culture shows signs of complexity characteristic of colonial anxieties.

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