Alexander the Great, the Chinese physician Li Wenliang, Antigone and Greta Thunberg had anything to do with one another. And yet: They were or still are considered heroes or heroines in their time, in their countries, societies and even beyond. What makes them similar?

Heroes and heroines are not born, but made – by those who tell stories filled with admiration to heroise a person, a feat or an event. So the question of how a hero or a heroine is made, of who or what they are, is not up to the heroised themselves, but rather the societies doing the heroising. But what happens exactly when heroines and heroes are spoken of and heroised?

The Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB, or Collaborative Research Centre) 948 at the University of Freiburg has made heroisation the focus of a twelve-year research project, examining the process in the past and present from a social, cultural, political and international perspective. One of the findings is that heroisation generally involves nine components. The Prinzip Held* (The Hero Principle) exhibition examines this phenomenon: Heroines and heroes do not necessarily stand out because of their particular biographies, but rather because they break boundaries, bend rules, fight battles, unite communities on the inside and define them against the outside – and are presented for a specific audience. Prinzip Held* thus highlights the impact that different combinations of these components have, from Alexander the Great to Greta Thunberg.

As a public research project, Prinzip Held* is a cooperation between the University of Freiburg (SFB 948), the Bundeswehr Centre of Military History and Social Sciences (ZMSBw) and the Bundeswehr Museum of Military History.

From 21 June to 03 November 2024, the exhibition will be shown at the Gatow Airfield branch of the Bundeswehr Museum of Military History. It is designed and presented by the Berlin theatre group Rimini Protokoll and Dominik Steinmann. To accompany the exhibition, a guide published by Wallstein Verlag Göttingen and entitled Prinzip Held*. Von Heroisierungen und Heroismen (The Hero Principle. On Heroisations and Heroisms) will be available in bookstores from June 2024.