Ladenburg Research Network
“The Aggressor: Self-Perception and External Perception of an Actor Between Nations”

Workshop
“Conceptual Exchange on ‘The Aggressor’ and Related Terms”

23–25 September 2026
Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia

Programme

Wednesday, 23 September 2026

14:30–17:00 Visit to the National Museum of Military History
18:15–18:30 Opening at the Centre for Advanced Study
● Diana Mishkova (Academic Director of the Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia): Welcome
● Thomas Maissen (Heidelberg University): Introduction

18:30–19:30 Keynote Lecture
Chair: Diana Mishkova
Anuschka Tischer (Julius-Maximilians – Universität Würzburg): Declared enemy, misguided friend – talking about aggressors in early modern justifications of war

Thursday, 24 September 2026

Project presentations
09:00–10:30 Project Session 1
Chair: Ilaria Porciani (University of Bologna)
● Lisa Fahrni (Heidelberg University): Project Presentation – One’s own Aggression in Retrospect: Napoleon and the Overcoming of the German-French Antagonism in the Post-War Period
● Ruth Hermstad (University of Oslo): “Death and every sacrifice, rather than become Swedes”. Bernadotte’s machinations, Norwegian resistance and the law of nations in 1814 and in Scandinavian memory culture

10:30–10:45 Coffee Break

10:45–12:15 Project Session 2
Chair: Ivan Sablin (Heidelberg University / Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana)
● Daniel Weinmann (Heidelberg University) Project Presentation – AggrEnemies? The Aggressor-Enemy Nexus in Russian Propaganda about Ukraine
● Olha Marmilova (Central European University Democracy Institute, Budapest): Project Presentation – Semantic Radicalisation of the Concept of the Aggressor during the current Russian-Ukrainian War

12:15–13:30 Lunch Break

13:30–15:00 Project Session 3
Chair: Sven Milekić (Central European University Democracy Institute, Budapest)
● Justus Raimann (Ruhr University Bochum): Project Presentation – The true enemy. Aggressors and conspirators within the Media of the German New Right”
● Kai Steinhage (Ruhr University Bochum): Project Presentation – ‘Aggressor Narratives’ as a new category for the analysis of historical nation images? A brief look at British representations of Germany, 1860-1918

15:00–15:15 Coffee Break

15:15–16:45 Project Session 4
Chair: Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz (Jagiellonian University, Kraków)
●
Sven Milekić (Central European University Democracy Institute, Budapest): Project Presentation – Croatian 1990s veterans’ perception of enemies through the nesting Balkanism lens
● Patryk Krupiński (Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences): Project Presentation – Two Facets of Piłsudski. Transformations of Ukrainian Narratives about Józef Piłsudski in the Shadow of Russian Aggressions (2014-2025)

17:30–18:30 Keynote Lecture 2 (online)
Chair: Thomas Maissen
Martin van Gelderen (University of Göttingen): Tyrants, Oligarchs and Heretics: The Aggressor in the Words and Images of the Renaissance, 1515-1648

Friday, 25 September 2026

The Aggressor in the Early Modern Period
09:00–10:30 Panel 1.
Chair: Márton Zászkaliczky (CAS)
● Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz (Jagiellonian University, Kraków): Aggression, just war and secularisation. An unobvious juxtaposition of Paweł Włodkowic (Paulus Vladimiri) and Carl Schmitt’.
● Elisabeth Osing (Heidelberg University): Scourge of God and Terror of the World: Describing Attila in Early Modern Western Europe

10:30–10:45 Coffee Break

10:45–12:15 Panel 2.
Chair: Thomas Maissen (Heidelberg)
● Márton Zászkaliczky (Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia): Justifying self-defence against the tyrannical Rudolf during the Bocskai rebellion
● Luigi Cajani (Roma): Framing the Catholic Aggressor: International Protestant Propaganda during the 1655 Waldensian War (Pasque piemontesi)

12:15–13:30 Lunch Break

13:30–15:00 Panel 3.
Chair: Anuschka Tischer (Würzburg)
● Thomas Maissen (Heidelberg University): The Danish war against Holstein Gottorf in 1713. On the German reception of the term “aggressor”
● Vilma Vaskelaitė (Heidelberg University): “The hordes of the northern Lioness and the western wolf” vs. “Jacobin fanatics”, or On framing the foreign aggressors in the Kościuszko Uprising (1794)

15:00–15:15 Coffee Break

15:15–16:30 Roundtable. Conceptualizing the early modern aggressor
Chair: Luigi Cajani (Roma)
● Anuschka Tischer
● Thomas Maissen
● Márton Zászkaliczky

Photographs © Vilma Vaskelaitė