Bernhard is a traveller of inner and outer landscapes, with a passion for instilling curiosity and sense of wonder.

A Renaissance scholar by training, he thrives exploring the universes of the mind between the covers of old prints, as well as reading the stories that lie inscribed into the world around us.

Leading "Frozen Atlantis", Bernhard and his team create ways to share stories from these journeys, and to inspire ways of finding awe in the world we leave behind.


Academic trajectory
Bernhard felt inspired by stories and mythology already as a kid, fostering a love for languages and literature.

He decided to start his academic journey by studying classical languages. Throughout his studies, Bernhard was supported by a scholarship by the German Academic Foundation.

Longer stays in Italy brought him closer to the arts and humanist culture and its spirit of bringing the worlds of the ancient Greeks and Romans to life again. He followed this fascination deeper into the field of Renaissance Studies, in which he eventually defended his PhD in 2014.

In the years that followed, Bernhard worked and published on the intersection between literature and the visual arts. Subjects such as emblematics and antiquarianism continue to fascinate him to the present day.

A Berlin-based project with Bernd Roling on the Swedish polymath Olof Rudbeck (1630–1702) added a Nordic track to his interests. Following research stays to Uppsala, London (The Warburg Institute), Rome, and Innsbruck, Bernhard eventually won a Freigeist Fellowship by the VolkswagenFoundation.

The prestigious research grant for young Post-Docs allowed him to pursue his approach on Olof Rudbeck and his world in a long-term academic project.

In 2018, Bernhard started "Reaching for Atlantis" at the Center for Early Modern Studies at Erfurt/Gotha. The project set out from the objects, maps, or panoramas illustrating Rudbeck’s monumental 'Atlantica'. From these, the team built a visual database, presenting the illustrations as gateways into the stories behind them and the meaning they were assigned in that historic context.

For Bernhard, the trust to work with a maximum of freedom and flexibility also came with a responsibility to rethink how the Humanities can effectively and meaningfully contribute to the global challenges of our time.

Bernhard continued to steer his project towards alternative forms of publishing and newly emerging disciplines. Longer stays at Oxford (Wolfson College, 2019–2021) brought new inspiration and encouraged new paths in storytelling. These resulted in a web platform exploring illustrated long reads and more personal narrations to open up the stories behind landscapes and historic objects encountered during his journeys.

In 2021, Bernhard chose a new home for the ever-developing project, transferring into the field of Public History at Hamburg University. By then, he had experienced more of the landscapes up north which Rudbeck had enchanted with ancient myths 350 years ago. Encounters with these sites in their present state had left him with a sense of urgency to create awareness for the cultural heritage (e.g. songs, myths, images) that become uprooted in the light of man-made change, and for our human need for stories that (still) make sense of the world around us.

Following this approach, Bernhard built a team of professionals to explore this topic in more visual and personal formats. A forthcoming feature film marks the keystone in a wider portfolio of initiatives. These the VolkswagenFoundation support as "Frozen Atlantis" – an outreach project about 21st-century encounters with the mythical lands of Olof Rudbeck.


Selected publications(in printed form)

Italian Renaissance

• 'Decoding da Vinci's Impresa: Leonardo's gift to Cardinal Ippolito d'Este and Mario Equicola's De opportunitate (1507)', in: Warburg Institute: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 78 (2015), 135–155.
• '(Re)Writing the Early Biography of the Alhambra’s Fountain of Lions. New Evidence from a Neo-Latin Poem (1497)', Muqarnas. An Annual on the Visual Culture of the Islamic World 34 (2017), 259–271.
• Die Ökonomie der Dichtung: Pietro Lazzaronis Lobgedicht auf den Borgia-Papst Alexander VI. (1497), New York-Hildesheim: Olms, 2016.

Antiquarianism, Emblems, and the North

• Apotheosis of the North: the Swedish appropriation of classical antiquity around the Baltic Sea and beyond (1650 to 1800), edd. Bernd Roling and Bernhard Schirg, Berlin-Boston: De Gruyter, 2017.
  
• 'Phoenix going bananas. The Swedish Appropriation of a Classical Myth, and its Demise in Botanical Scholarship (Engelbert Kaempfer, Carl Linnaeus)', in: Apotheosis of the North 2017 (see above), 17–46.
• 'The Daphnic fate of Camerarius. Olof Rudbeck the Younger's botanical dissertation (1686) revealed as Sweden's first printed emblem book', in: Emblems and the Natural World (1500–1700), edd. Karl A.E. Enenkel and Paul J. Smith, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2017, 227–270.
  
• Boreas rising. Antiquarianism and the building of national narratives in 17th and 18th century Scandinavia, edd. Bernd Roling and Bernhard Schirg, Berlin-Boston: De Gruyter, 2019.