Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, Aleksandr Nevskij: Heiliger-Furst-Nationalheld. Ein Erinnerungsfigur Im Russischen Kulturellen Gedachtnis (1263-2000) (Book Review‪)‬

Frithjof Benjamin Schenk, Aleksandr Nevskij: Heiliger-Furst-Nationalheld. Ein Erinnerungsfigur im russischen kulturellen Gedachtnis (1263-2000). [Aleksandr Nevskii: Saint-Prince-National Hero. A Figure of Commemoration in Russian Cultural Memory (1263-2000)]. 548 pp. Koln: Bohlau, 2004. ISBN 3412069043. 68.90 [euro]. Frithjof Schenk's book is one of the first efforts in our field of Slavic Studies to write a story of the reception and various discursive usages of one historical figure encompassing a very long period of time. The figure is Prince Aleksandr Nevskii and the span of time is over seven centuries. For studies of this type, the choice of figure is of crucial importance. Aleksandr Nevskii is, no doubt, a very good choice, because only a small number of Russian historical personages have so rich a pedigree of discursive manipulations. His image incorporated several discursive (or ideological) blocks, such as his sanctity, his role as a defender of the "Russian land," as a founder of the ruling dynasty, as a saintly warrior, as a national hero, and so on. Each of these hypostases came to the fore in different historical periods under different historical circumstances; one interpretation superceded another but did not obliterate the previous one completely so that, as a discursively constructed entity, Aleksandr Nevskii is a multilayered palimpsest. The goal of the book is to read this palimpsest one layer after another and to analyze the numerous shifts and displacements of meaning that characterized its creation. The composition of the book is neat and transparent, in perfect accordance with its scholarly purposes.