Imperial Biographers? Imperial identities and self-image in the work of Constantin von Wurzbach and Aleksandr A. Polovcov

19世纪晚期可以被描述为大型传记百科全书的时代。特别是在中欧和东欧的帝国，这种大量传记作品的项目出现了。康斯坦丁·Wurzbach在哈布斯堡王朝开始出版Das biography ische Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich (1856-1891), Aleksandr A. Polovcov在俄罗斯开始创建Russkij biografieskij Slovar（1896-1918）。通常，历史学家使用这些词典作为他们研究的资料来源，并错误地将它们称为国家传记。本文运用历史话语分析和叙事理论的方法，在较新的帝国比较研究的框架内对其进行了探索。比较方法主要集中在三个主题上：首先，研究两位编辑Wurzbach和Polovcov的传记，以及他们对帝国的看法。第二，论两种传记百科全书的编纂历史及各自形成过程的异同。第三，关于百科全书作为帝国认同的手段及其潜在的（地区、国家、社会、宗教等）共同体概念。这种方法使得解密这两个集体传记的矩阵成为可能。事实证明：在这两个系列中，具体的机制被用来产生整个帝国的凝聚力。Wurzbach和Polovcov在不同的时间和空间感知的基础上创造了特定的文化功能记忆。本书从以演员为中心的视角，创新地揭示了帝国的语义学，为研究帝国的传记和历史提供了相关的见解。

The late 19th century can be described as the age of huge biographical encyclopaedia. Especially in the empires of Central and Eastern Europe, such projects of substantial biographical works emerged. Constantin Wurzbach began to publish Das Biographische Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich (1856-1891) in the Habsburg Monarchy and Aleksandr A. Polovcov started to form the Russkij Biografičeskij Slovar‘ (1896-1918) in Russia. Usually, historians use these dictionaries as sources for their research and erroneously refer to them as national biographies. The present dissertation uses historical discourse analysis and methods of narrative theory in the framework of newer comparative studies of empires to explore them sui generis. The comparative approach focuses on three major topics: First, on the biographies of the editors, Wurzbach and Polovcov, and on their ideas of empire. Second, on the history of the edition of both biographical encyclopaedias and on similarities and differences in their respective formation processes. Third, on both encyclopaedia as means for identification with empire and on their underlying (regional, national, social, religious, etc.) conceptions of community. This approach made it possible to decrypt the matrices of both collective biographies. It turns out: In both collections concrete mechanisms are used to generate a feeling of cohesion of the whole empire. Wurzbach and Polovcov created particular cultural functional memories on the basis of different perceptions of time and space. The present book constitutes an innovative approach to uncover semantics of empire from an actor-centric perspective and provides pertinent insights for the study of biography and the history of empires.