In an interdisciplinary spectrum of history, literary and political science, sociology, art history, philosophy and theology, various forms and patterns of meaning of the symbolic are examined in this book. In particular, historical-empirical studies on the symbolization of constitutions, parliaments, republican or totalitarian forms of rule should be mentioned here. In addition, types of representation, ritual signing practices and visual and medial figurations in aristocratic, ecclesiastical and bourgeois lifestyles are analyzed. The volume, which follows the central research perspectives of the Dresden Collaborative Research Center Institutionality and Symbolization, contains contributions by Ernst Dassmann, Hermann Deuser, Helmut Feld, Jurgen Gebhardt, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Jurgen Habermas, Michael Hoffmann, Tonio Hoelscher, Justus Lentsch, and Peter von Moos , Heinrich Oberreuter, Goetz Pochat, Jeanette Rauschert, Bernd Roeck, Michael Rothmann, Uwe Walter, Siegfried Wiedenhofer and Beat Wyss.