Spaces to Escape and Hideaways – Miniature and Doll Worlds of the ›Count of Kiedorf‹ as a Staging of a New Order

Abstract

The example of the rococo miniature and doll worlds of the (self-proclaimed) 'Count of Kiedorf', the stage designer and miniaturist Manfred Kiedorf who lived and worked in the GDR, is used to examine the function, effect and forms of dealing with the space defined by miniatures. The referential source and frame of interpretation is not so much Kiedorf’s concrete miniature world itself, but a literary text by the author Volker Handloik about this eccentric 'anti-world' and its creator, which is endowed with deeper meaning and ironic refractions. The analysis of the text's ‘image-text structure’ differentiates between the discourse of the narrator and the self-presentation of the portrayed miniaturist. By combining these two perspectives, the function, meaning and staging effects of this overall ensemble of a miniature and doll world are revealed. It is an alternative world whose utopian design is ultimately not realized.