Sophie-Charlott Hartisch receives the ZfL’s Carlo Barck Prize

The 2025 Carlo Barck Prize is awarded to Sophie-Charlott Hartisch for her dissertation “Astrale Konstellationen in der Lyrik um 1900. Stern und Kosmos als Zeitsignatur der Moderne” [Astral Constellations in Poetry around 1900: Stars and the Cosmos as Signatures of Modernity], written at the University of Cologne. Here, Sophie-Charlott Hartisch examines the interactions between popular culture, the history of science, and modern poetry around 1900, illustrating how the motif of star constellations captures a specifically modern experience of time. The dissertation displays extensive knowledge and offers insightful, original interpretations. Hartisch convincingly demonstrates how, in poetry, cosmic imagery serves as a starting point for reflections on modern society, ranging from the social and epistemological to questions of representation.

Awarded by the ZfL for the first time in 2017, the Carlo Barck Prize honors dissertations in the field of literary and cultural studies that pose innovative questions and display original conception. The prize is usually awarded every two years. The prize money of 12,000 euros is allocated as a six-month scholarship for a fellowship at the ZfL. Sophie-Charlott Hartisch, currently a research associate at the University of Bonn, will start her ZfL fellowship on April 1, 2026.

Karlheinz “Carlo” Barck (1934–2012) was a scholar of Romance literatures who had a profound impact on the ZfL’s research program. Best known for his research on the history of aesthetics and imagination since the 18th century, he was the driving force in the development and publication of the Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, a historical dictionary of basic aesthetic concepts.