Staging the return to normality. Socio-cultural coping strategies with the crisis of 1816/1817

Abstract

After the subsistence crisis of 1816/1817 in Central Europe a new festival was invented and celebrated all over southern Germany: The parade of the first harvest carriage. This paper analyses the parade in Stuttgart, using articles published in the newspapers and contemporary prints. The parades and their illustrations represent interlocking media that offered symbolic socio-cultural coping mechanisms. In order to trace their effects, theories of intermediality (Rajewsky) and cultural memory (Assmann) are applied. These festivities enabled media consumers to process the closure of the crisis.