English abstract (the talk will be in German!): The speaker has worked at the University of Freiburg since 2012, on the transdisciplinary special research area SFB 948 “Heroes – Heroizations – Heroisms.” His topic is the expressive forms and functions of the heroic in a historical, diachronic, media-based, and comparative perspective. The concern here is especially to ask what role was played by processes of heroization, and the heroic figures constituted in them, for societies from ancient to modern times, and in what sense heroes and heroines strengthened communities, but also made it possible to articulate conflicts. The paper treats heroizations and heroisms on the conceptual basis of the joint research project. Taking two examples – an offering vessel for Heracles and the portrait of Alexander the Great – it aims to show the sense in which, in Greek antiquity, certain cult and visual practices constituted heroization processes and to ask who were the actors in them. This also raises the question of how forms of expressing the heroic can be de-semantized and become ordinary, everyday matters.