Organisation: Philipp Kohl, München
The section discusses the popularization of paleontological prehistory in (trans-)national and imperial contexts of the 19th and 20th centuries with a focus on the Habsburg Empire and Czechoslovakia. The role of science popularization in the formation of national identities and imperial imaginaries during the 19th century has recently caught the attention of historians of science. As disciplines engaged with both the deep past, the geographical present, and the economic future, geology and paleontology contributed to these processes through museum work, popular books, illustrations, and paintings. While the visual history of popular prehistory in Western Europe has been well studied, its presence in Central and Eastern Europe is lesser known. The section suggests an entangled history of paleontological popularization, bridging world-famous cases (Franz Unger/Josef Kuwasseg, Zdeněk Burian) and lesser-known examples from the Czech national context of the 19th century (Joachim Barrande, Antonín Frič).