Anstandsbücher, Etiquette Books and Traités de Savoir-Vivre 1870–1930: Guides for Conduct as Political Media?

从1870年到1930年，礼仪书籍是国际图书市场上的一种大众现象。自20世纪70年代以来，这些出版物主要受到社会学、民族学和文学研究的关注，探讨它们对社会行为规则、阶级和性别角色发展的作用。因此，在社会变革时期寻求指导的某些阶层、年龄和性别群体被确定为礼仪书籍的目标受众，其创作者敏锐地迎合了目标受众的需求。然而，这类题材的政治内容仍然被排除在外。在初步研究中，申请人采用了这一新方法。最初的结果表明，礼仪书籍在思想上、政治上或忏悔上界定的群体(即政治文化的片段)作为一种手段，通过采纳和影响他们的态度来实现自信和描绘。该项目旨在通过基于长期国际视角进行基础性研究并分析大量来源，首次证明这一假说。重点分析了德国、法国和英国这三个礼仪文学领域曾经的领头羊。通过这样做，该项目的目的不仅是为了确定这一流派的一般特征和意义，而且是为了促进历史研究的一些新领域：媒体与政治文化部分之间的关系以及一般大众媒体的发展和功能。为此，将对270本礼仪书籍进行分析，这三个国家的30种出版物分别在1870年至1930年期间出版，因为这一时期在政治和社会历史上也具有非常重要的意义。此外，作为样本，计划对多达30家出版商的档案馆进行研究，以确定礼仪书籍创作者的意图，特别是目标受众的接受程度。主要的调查主题将是礼仪书籍中的政治(更广泛意义上)声明的维度，从而为读者提供一种实践守则，读者和书评人如何接受这些出版物，作者和出版商如何对客户的反馈及其变化做出反应。进一步的问题是，礼仪书籍是否对某些政治文化部分比对其他部分更重要，它们在重点关注的国家是否具有不同的重要性，以及所有这一切背后的根本原因。这项为期三年的项目成果将以专著形式出版。这些结果也被认为是进一步研究供需环境、礼仪书籍作者可能的跨国联系、媒介与社会过程的相互关系以及全球视角下政治文化的异同的基础。

Etiquette books were a mass-phenomenon on the international book markets from 1870 to 1930. Since the 1970s, these publications have mainly been attended to by sociology, ethnology and literature studies, inquiring into their function for the development of social rules of conduct, classes and gender roles. Consequently certain strata, age and gender groups searching for guidance in times of social change have been identified as target audience of etiquette books, whose creators perceptively catered to the target audience’s needs. The political content of the genre, however, remained blanked out. In preliminary studies the applicant has followed this new approach. First results imply that etiquette books served ideologically, politically or confessionally defined groups (i. e. segments of political cultures) as a means to attain self-assurance and delineation by adopting and influencing their attitudes. The project aims to prove this hypothesis for the first time by conducting a fundamental study based on a long-term international perspective and analyzing a large amount of sources. Focussing on Germany, France and Great Britain, the formerly leading countries on the field of etiquette literature are subject of analysis. In doing so, the project’s aim is not just to ascertain the general characteristics and significance of this genre but to contribute to some newly emerging areas of historical research: the relation between media and segments of political cultures as well as the development and function of mass media in general. For this purpose 270 etiquette books are to be analysed, 30 publications from each of the three named countries in three editions respectively published between 1870 and 1930, as this period is highly significant with regard to political and social history as well. Moreover, as a sample research is planned in up to 30 publisher’s archives to determine the intentions of the creators of manner books and especially the reception by target audiences. Leading subjects of inquiry will be the dimension of political (in a broader sense statements in etiquette books, therefore supplying a code of practice for their readers and how the publications were received by audiences and book reviewers, how authors and publishers reacted to the feedback of their clientele as well as to its transformations. Further questions are whether etiquette books were more important for certain segments of political cultures than for others, whether they were of different importance in the focussed countries, and the underlying causes behind all this. The results of the three-year-project will be published as a monograph. These results are also supposed as a foundation for further studies on the settings of supply and demand, on possible transnational interconnections of the authors of etiquette books, the mutual relation of media and social processes as well as similarities and differences of political cultures in a global perspective.