ABSTRACT
In December of 1970, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt traveled to Warsaw to conclude an historic treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland. Brandt's first full day in Warsaw included two scheduled wreath-laying ceremonies. The first was at the grave of the Unknown Soldier. Brandt's second commemorative appointment was at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, a tribute to the martyrs of the Warsaw Ghetto. Brandt's gesture was especially poignant, crystallizing numerous historical and political themes, taking place in a sacralised space, and employing allusive visual rhetoric. A photograph of Brandt giving a speech would have been less powerful, just as the speech itself would have been. The author uses the concept of profile to describe the unique contours, of political meaning systems at given points in time. Attention to a profile points out the total relations of fields, media, and genres at any particular point in time, a figuration that is at once total yet completely virtual.
