This article argues that Carl Schmitt’s approach to the visual expression of political power evolves from an early reliance on symbolic form to a later adoption of allegory, influenced by Walter Benjamin. Initially attracted to the Catholic Church as a symbolic synthesis of bureaucracy and charisma, Schmitt grew disillusioned with its modes of visual representation. He then turned to political myth, envisioning the national leader as the symbolic incarnation of a unified people. This model, however, also proved untenable. In search of an alternative, Schmitt drew on Benjamin’s theory of allegory to retrieve the Baroque tradition of state personification: Sovereigns, like actors on a stage, outwardly represent the state without claiming to exhaust its meaning. I contend that this allegorical framework allowed Schmitt not only to sidestep the totalizing tendencies of political myth but also to open a conceptual path for reimagining Europe’s postwar fractured space.
Jerónimo Rilla (Mon,) studied this question.