Nina Maria Gorrissen Lecture

The Ottoman Wars and the German Homefront, 1470-1620

In the Holy Roman Empire, political and religious leaders deployed the rhetoric of Islamophobia to mobilize political, financial, and troop support for their hot and cold wars with the Ottoman Empire. Yet the social and cultural consequences of this prolonged conflict extended far beyond inflammatory propaganda. In this talk, Carina L. Johnson will explore the lived experiences of soldiers and refugees that were integral to shaping imperial politics, concepts of masculine and Christian identity, limits of sanctioned violence, racialized knowledge about the Ottoman state and peoples, and the lives of former Ottoman subjects in the Holy Roman Empire.