II Condottiere
Ulrich Gehmann

Abstract
The article is about a figure central for occidental history, the Condottiere, an installed mercenary who originally fought for Italian town states to secure their interests. But he became more than just a historical figure, since standing for myth-grounded values and norms of conduct which became prevalent again and make up our today's life spaces in a considerable degree. Spaces moulded by the activities of his recent descendants who became tamer, on the one hand, in getting more bureaucratisized than their forerunner, but on the other hand, exactly through this, also became even more powerful than their predecessor already had been. A development linked to the individualistic as value of own rank, a value that turned out to become the norming leading principle in modern Capitalism, not confined to condottieri. Related, the capitalistic utopia could spread out, a utopia in the original sense but a one inside which we all live in, and the crisis of which we are experiencing once more. Both utopia and crisis enabled by the formats of domination those condottieri held, and hold up still in a mechanized structure of governing things that lost its meaning.

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