As part of this process of ‘self-fashioning’, they sometimes even included a portrait of themselves at the beginning of the book in a style that resembled the image of an author. The Nuremberg publisher and bookseller Friedrich Roth-Scholtz (1687–1736) made exceptionally good use of this self-promotional strategy: he had his likeness printed as a copperplate engraving around 20 times in order to illustrate his different roles: as a bookseller, a founder of libraries, a collector and – most importantly – an editor. Starting with this flamboyant example, the MWW sub-project addresses portraits of editors as an instrument of self-fashioning by publishers. As authors gained increasing status, other groups of people sought to participate in this practice as a way of winning prestige.

Funding: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Federal Ministry of Education and Research, BMBF) within the framework of the MWW
Duration: November 2017 – December 2018
Project participants: Lea Hagedorn (team member), Alexandra Serjogin (team member)