5 - Between Style and Substance

Summary

West German President Heinrich Lübke’s 1963 trip to Indonesia was the first official visit of a Western head of state to the island nation. An official German photograph shows him paying his respects in a war heroes’ cemetery. This chapter explores the political significance of the ceremonial and deconstructs this photograph. The chapter is a thick description of this state visit as an interaction between West Germany and Indonesia at the time of decolonisation. The chapter departs from the realist paradigm of the history of diplomacy and interprets the visit in terms of the cultural history of diplomacy. Cultural aspects of diplomacy create political meaning and shape political outcomes. Style and substance of diplomatic encounters mutually condition each other. These insights provide the basis for a cultural history of global diplomacy, one that helps us break down boundaries between binary categories such as East and West, while at the same time displaying an awareness of global asymmetries.