Autobiographies and self portraits can be understood as figures of image control that try to express and secure a persons reputation for contemporary and future generations. However, there have always been competing perspectives between self-descriptions and descriptions of oneself by others. It is this interplay that determines the current effects and the lasting impact of self-fashionings - and produces the distinction between Dichtung und Wahrheit (facts and fiction), between illusion and reality. Morphomatas annual conference thus questions the cultural, historical, and medial figures of these distinctions in case studies from antiquity to the present.

Günter Blamberger ist Professor für Neuere deutsche Literaturwissenschaft, Dietrich Boschung Professor für Klassische Archäologie an der Universität zu Köln. Beide sind Direktoren des Internationalen Kollegs Morphomata: Genese, Dynamik und Medialität kultureller Figurationen an der Universität zu Köln.