The ArgumentThe text analyzes the related semantics of bacteriology and politics in imperial Germany. The rapid success of bacteriology in the 1880s and 1890s was due not least to the fact that scientific concepts of bacteria as “the smallest but most dangerous enemies of mankind” resonated with contemporary ideas about political enemies. Bacteriological hygiene was expected to provide answers to social and political problems. At the same time metaphors borrowed from bacteriological terminology were incorporated into the political language of the (...) time. While the “high command of our doctors” fought diseases, some contemporaries were identified with members of the evil species of “bacillus communis odii.”Both imperialistic politics and bacteriological science relied on images of inferior and invisible but potent enemies. Both were able to increase their prestige via a mutual interchange of their vocabularies. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe vine lousePhylloxera vastatrixbecame a “pest” as it was transferred from North America and from France to Germany during the 1870s. Embodying the “invading alien,” it assumed a cultural position that increasingly gained importance in Imperial Germany. In this process, the minute insect, living invisibly underground, was made visible and became constitutive of the scientific-technological object, “pest,” pertaining to a scientific discipline, modern economic entomology. The “pest” phylloxera emerged by being made visible in a way that enabled control measures (...) against it. Thus, visibility functioned as a prerequisite for control measures. I differentiate between social visibility and physical visibility, as well as between social control and physical control of the “introduced pest.” The object phylloxera emerged at the intersection of techniques of social control such as surveillance, techniques of physical control such as disinfection, and representational practices of the sciences such as mathematics and graphics. The space of its visibility was not the vineyard as property of a vintner but the vineyard as national territory, where German (viti-) culture was defended against foreign infiltration and destruction. Many vintners had alternate visions of the grapevine disease, they resented the invasion and destruction of their vineyards by government officers, and thus they did not participate in the social and epistemic constitution of the “pest.” By 1914, the “introduced pest” had not yet become an effective “machinery.” However, the “pest” as an object of scientific knowledge emerged together with economic entomology. The field became organized as a discipline in Germany in 1913, forty years after the phylloxera had first aroused the minds of some worried Wilhelmians, and, together with its nationalistic images, the field of “pest” control became organized towards a redefinition of German society and its perceived dangers. (shrink)

Abstract“Staining is the Best Policy”. Visualization in the work of Paul Ehrlich. For nearly all of his life, the biomedical scientist Paul Ehrlich dedicated himself to work on dyes and staining at the interface between so‐called color‐chemistry and histopathology. The article begins by sketching out the field of histopathology at the junction of pathological anatomy, microtechniques, and the development of chemical dyes in the early 1870s when Ehrlich began his training as a medical student. The article explores Ehrlich's work staining (...) first tissue and blood, and then pathogens and vital staining in the 1880s. In the late 1880s and 1890s, Ehrlich experimented with dyes as therapeutic agents. Staining made the invisible visible, revealing cell structures, pathogens, or vital physiological processes within the cell itself. The article shows how visualization became an essential – albeit laborious and painstaking – element in the epistemic process of Ehrlich's work. The production of histological specimens required special skills acquired through extensive practice, especially in the techniques of visualization, manipulation, observation, and tacit understanding. These practices were needed because it was increasingly necessary to produce objective results once the various techniques of visualization came to be assessed within a discourse on objectivity. Visualization itself became an epistemic object and was ultimately “more important than the subject matter itself”. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Seit Langem sieht die Welt sich wieder einer globalen pandemischen Bedrohung ausgesetzt, die nicht nur wissenschaftlich, wirtschaftlich, politisch und gesellschaftlich, sondern auch künstlerisch zu bewältigen versucht wird. Dabei dominieren vor allem zwei visuelle Phänomene die Bildwelten der journalistischen und sozialen Medien: das Bild der Maske und das Bild des Virus selbst. Beide Bilder sind insbesondere in der Verbindung mit epi- und pandemischer Erfahrung bereits hoch aufgeladen. Die Sichtbarkeit der Maske und die Sichtbarmachung des Virus verweisen auf ihre komplexen historischen (...) Dimensionen und rufen philosophisch-ethische Fragen auf. Durch eine Gegenüberstellung von künstlerischen Zeugnissen historischer und gegenwärtiger Seuchenerfahrung werden im vorliegenden Beitrag historisch tradierte Muster von narrativen und visuellen Seuchendarstellungen, die auch den gegenwärtigen Pandemiediskurs bestimmen, herausgearbeitet und kritisch hinterfragt. Dabei wird gefragt, wie Kunst und Literatur zu einer rhetorischen und metaphorischen Deeskalation aktueller und zukünftiger pandemischer Krisendiskurse beitragen und damit auch eine der Ästhetik inhärente Ethik aufzeigen können. (shrink)