"Last knight" and the first modern media professional, political publicist and collector of epic courtly poetry, active universal genius and unrealistic utopian - the labels that have been attached to the figure of Maximilian I in research are diverse and contradictory. This volume brings together the results of a conference held on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Emperor's death and thus contributions from a broad spectrum of historical cultural studies for a multi-perspective analysis of political figures, people and work against the background of an epoch that was equally characterized by processes of change and tendencies to persist seems.