Managing Maximilian

Progress in historical research depends on the exploitation of new sources. While nineteenth-century historians concentrated on structural and administrative changes during Maximilians reign, recent studies have tended to focus on the Emperors personality and agency, presented him as a monomaniacal politician or patron of artistic and cultural productions, as a master of media manipulation and impresario of his own self-image and political strategy. Accounts of Maximilians so-called works of fame often present him as the one who conceived, commissioned, arranged, and supervised all the related artistic activities. Yet Maximilian was not the only genius behind this textual, musical and visual propaganda, nor was he the sole designer of his own politics. Where earlier accounts overemphasised Maximilians personal share in the conception and execution of his reign, modern scholars have often neglected his crucial interactions with those who implemented his rule. Even though studies on Maximilian have never denied the importance of relationships between the actors involved in his reign, they have generally failed to view his politics and government as the result of networks of individuals, and to examine their workings by using the tools of prosopography. ManMAX presents a fresh approach to Maximilians reign, and to pre-modern rulership and governance more broadly. It systematically investigates all levels of his administration, not only the council or elite functionaries, others with personal bonds to the ruler, or the relatives and intimates of those at the highest political level. It considers all agents of Maximilians extensive rule who are named in the central documentation generated by his chanceries, ranging from high-ranking members of his household down to muleteers. ManMAX will provide a comprehensive prosopographical analysis of Maximilians reign based on new principles for the interdisciplinary selection and assessment of sources. One of its central research products will be an open-access dataset, which at the end of the eight years of the SFB project will include an estimated 200,000 persons and the nature of their interactions, presented in detailed digests according to the editorial guidelines of the Regesta Imperii series. The sheer mass of this material represents an entirely new dimension in Maximilian research. This dataset will provide the basis for detailed thematic studies. ManMAX aims to surmount compartmentalisation by profoundly connecting and integrating several related aspects. Its concept transgresses anachronistic disciplinary boundaries while maintaining a disciplinary depth of field and includes eight tightly interlocking subprojects. They will draw on the dataset as a central and binding research tool, while contributing to its constant expansion and optimisation. The broad interdisciplinary arrangement of the team ensures that the approaches of individual disciplines are optimally interlinked.