Heraldische Orgien und sozialer Aufstieg. Oder: Wo ist eigentlich „oben“ in der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt?

Summary Heraldic Orgies and Social Advancement. Or: Where Actually Is „Top“ in the Late-Medieval City One of the key concepts of Max Weber’s „The City“ was that in northwestern Europe landed nobility and urban patricians were clearly distinguished; for Weber, this was indeed the main reason to locate the occidental city in the north rather than in the Mediterranean. It has often been tought that tournament books and armorials produced this very difference – to display inherited status (in the case of ancient families) or to claim status (in the case of social climbers). The article looks at one of the largest, most sumptuous and, at the same time, most widely spread armorials of medieval Europe, that of Konrad Grunenberg (d. 1494). He himself has often been quoted as a paradigmatic social climber, as he left his guild to join the society of the local nobility „Zur Katz“ and issued a sumptuous armorial. Yet this armorial, while containing over 2000 coat-of-arms mainly from the southwest of the Empire, does...