The Paradox of Visual and Material Cultures in Mack Walker's German Home Towns

Abstract

As far as visuality and materiality are concerned, Mack Walker's German Home Towns is a paradoxical work. In more than 400 pages of dense text about society, politics, and law in and around German towns from 1648 to 1871, the author devoted almost no space to the home towns' visual and material aspects. One would look in vain in this book for detailed descriptions of burghers' private and communal buildings; the layout of fortifications, streets, and public spaces; the location of civic and religious institutions; or the outward appearance of the townspeople, their fairs, rituals, and processions. Early in the book, Walker set the tone for his approach by dismissing as intellectually lazy the most common definition for a town in early modern central Europe—a settlement surrounded by physical walls—and in the entire book he included only one image of a German home town (and even that only on page 222).