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

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Marc von Knorring
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 411769824

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.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants