Die Macht des Charlatans

The type of modern populist has its role models in history: known to us from earlier times as a charlatan or quack. Today, he is celebrating new successes on the stage of world politics.

We read the cultural-historical analysis of a figure that has haunted European history in various roles since antiquity - written in 1937 by the Jewish-Austrian scholar Grete de Francesco. In the different character traits of the charlatan, we can already recognize his modern successors: here the greed of homeopathy - "A charlatan is one who boasts of knowing what he does not know and having abilities he does not possess," and there the populist, who breaks with the virtues of the successful: "The power of the charlatan lay in his ability to exploit and manipulate all uncertainties of a religious, spiritual, historical, or economic situation through various deceptions, creating a value world in which his own worthlessness became values."

De Francesco travels through the centuries via word and image and reveals to us a striking actor of our culture: in the sleight of hand tricks of miracle healers and the masquerade of transformation artists at the fairs of the 18th century, we can already discover the mechanisms that would later devastatingly influence and control the masses. The examples she finds in literature and visual arts for the greedy and opportunistic distorters of truth fit into a narrative about the susceptibility of humans.

From alchemists and gold makers to salve vendors and con artists, de Francesco traverses the visual worlds of the Renaissance and Baroque, presenting us with the masters of forgery and their audience. For her book is as much a study of cultural and art history as it is a sociological investigation.