Biographics has only recently started establishing itself as a field of research, and within it this study on biographical anthropology sets new directions by giving a detailed description of the significance of anthropological and moral-didactic theories and interests for the description of strangers' life histories in a chronological traverse of over 100 years of history of the genre. In contrast to traditional locations of biographical writing between art and scholarship, novel and historiography, biography is now reviewed as anthropological case history and didactic example. Foci: biographical stances in the 19th century (Varnhagen, Stifter, Laube, Gutzkow, Droysen, Ranke, Smiles, Gottschall) psychological and biological models 'modern biographics' (Wassermann, Zweig, Ludwig) national biographical texts (Ritter, Molo, Schäfer).

Autorentext

Christian von Zimmermann, Universität Bern, Schweiz.