Valentin Groebner Book order

Who are you? And how can you prove it? How were individuals described and identified by people who had never seen them before, in the centuries before photography and fingerprinting, in a world without centralized administrations, where names and addresses were constantly changing? In Who Are You?, Valentin Groebner traces the early modern European history of identification practices and identity papers. The documents, seals, stamps, and signatures were and are powerful tools that created the double of a person in writ and bore the indelible signs of bureaucratic authenticity. Ultimately, as Groebner lucidly explains, they revealed as much about their makers illustory fantasies as they did about their bearers actual identity. The bureaucratic desire to register and control the population created, from the sixteenth century onward, an intricate administrative system for tracking individual identities. Most important, the proof of ones identity was intimately linked and determined by the identification papers the authorities demanded and endlessly supplied. At the same time, these papers and practices gave birth to two uncanny doppelg̃ngers of administrative identity procedures: the spy who craftily forged official documents and passports, and the impostor who dissimulated and mimed any individual he so disired. Through careful research and powerful narrative, Groebner recounts the complicated and bizarre stories of the many ways in which identities were stolen, created, and doubled. Groebner argues that identity papers cannot be interpreted literally as pure and simple documents. They are themselves pieces of history, histories of individuals and individuality, papers that both document and transform their owners identity from Renaissance vagrants and gypsies to the illegal immigrants of today who remain "sans papiers," without papers

From the fourteenth century onward, Western visual culture increasingly depicted violence, transforming real individuals into nameless examples of horror. Historian Valentin Groebner presents a sophisticated model to understand how late-medieval images and narratives of "indescribable" violence functioned. He explores how early-modern images were part of a complex system for visualizing extreme violence through political, military, religious, sexual, and theatrical microhistories. These representations aimed to convey real pain and terror, depicting disfigured faces as symbols of sexual deviance, invisible enemies as barbaric fiends, and soldiers as ruthless conspirators wreaking havoc. However, the interpretation of these terrifying images varied among spectators. Who did one see when confronted with violence? What impact did such images have? Groebner questions how to differentiate between illegitimate violence that disrupts social order and the sanctioned use of force. By addressing these concerns, he challenges contemporary perspectives on early-modern visual culture and encourages readers to reconsider their views on brutality in a world marked by escalating violence.

Valentin Groebner examines gift-giving practices in late medieval and early modern Europe, particularly in the prosperous Upper Rhine cities from 1400 to 1550. The book delves into the roles gifts—such as wine, coins, and precious metals—played in political rituals and social hierarchies. The term for gifts in German reflects their dual nature, akin to pouring liquid, highlighting their importance in an economy of information that delineated social status. While meticulously recorded and governed by social codes, the traditions of gift exchange reveal ambivalence and anxieties surrounding the practice. Groebner questions when public gift distribution transitioned from an accepted norm to something clandestine and suspect. By the late fourteenth century, references to more dangerous gifts emerged, often linked to corruption and the male body, introducing a new vocabulary in legal and polemical contexts that addressed issues like simony and usury. This language of corruption, from "greasing hands" to sexualized imagery, has persisted. The exploration of these late medieval concepts reveals how political gifts served as instruments of control and manipulation, shedding light on a phenomenon that continues to influence social dynamics today.