The False Dmitry in Modernity. German and Russian Imaginations of the Baroque at the Beginning of the 20th Century

My project focuses on the aesthetic relationship between the Baroque and the avant-garde. Specifically, I am investigating the development of historical drama around the figure of the impostor False Dmitry in German, Austrian and Russian modernist literature. On the one hand, the image of the impostor can be interpreted as a literary response to the challenges of modernity. Literary adaptations of the character in the modern period show that the False Dmitry and the motif of imposture not only represent cultural and textual phenomena that transcend epochs, but also reflect the instability and upheavals of modernity. On the other hand, the Austrian authors’ works on False Dmitry reveal an aesthetic shift in temporal levels.

By transferring the state of emergency of the 17th century into the context of modernity, they succeed in drawing parallels between the political and social developments of their time and the past. At the same time, the temporal distance creates a space for reflection and reinterpretation of the historical potential of tragedy under the conditions of modernity.