Who do you think this statement comes from? “March! March! Now we are armed. And if we do not have to fight external enemies, we will defeat the rebels here at home.” From Putin now? From Erdogan after the coup attempt against him in 2016? Or from Trump before his supporters stormed the Capitol in 2021? No, that’s what the protagonist of the play “Richard III” says, William Shakespeare (1564-1616).
But the parallels to today seem clear. Therefore, 2018 is “Tyrant. Shakespeare’s Study of Power for the 21st Century. “In 2019, during the summer holidays, Angela Merkel read the sensational new book by the American literary historian and Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt,” says the recently released anthology Tyrants. Merkel wanted to deal with her American counterpart Trump’s style of government.
The German historian Barbara Stolberg-Riehlinger (67) and her German colleague André Krischer (48) commissioned experts from various faculties and universities to write portraits of historical and current tyrants for The Tyrants. Twenty texts about tyrants converged: from the Roman Caligula (12-41) to the already mentioned English king Richard III. (1452-1485) to Russian President Vladimir Putin (70) – a real cabinet of horrors.
just tyrants. But the contributions are not as egregious as the title promises. It is characteristic of scientists that they weigh everything and consider it in perspective. So it says here, “Was Emperor Gaius a tyrant?” Yes: Mugabe was a tyrant? And there: “Richard’s tyranny – just a myth?” In fact, the historical model had been dead for over a hundred years when Shakespeare published his historical drama around 1593. The poet knew the king only by hearsay.
Attributions are the same thing: in the case of historical figures, the actual situation is often unclear due to the lack of sources; in the case of acting figures, it is still unclear due to the multitude of facts. Adjectives for Putin: “authoritarian, despotic, totalitarian, fascist, Stalinist or neo-Stalinist” to name but a few. “You can take this terminological ambiguity as a flaw,” it says, “but terms usually only appear when something has gone so far as to be ready for a verdict.”
But so much time has passed by then that the facts are unclear again. Do the authors of “Tirantin” evade a clear judgment? Although they basically deny the humanity of those portrayed, they want people to remain visible so that we have to deal with them face to face. One thing is clear from this: instead of “Tirana”, this book should have been written as “Tyrants?” entitled.
André Krischer/Barbara Stallberg-Rielinger (ed.), Tyrants. History from Caligula to Putin, CH Beck