During his long and controversial life as a man and as a scholar, Schmitt presented himself in very different guises and with varying degrees of credibility. This attitude goes far beyond his countless, protean self-portraits (sometimes detailed, other times just sketched, and yet always revealing) which he created, mostly for self-serving reasons, throughout an existence and a career that were all but smooth – including those that were meant to debunk rather fanciful interpretations. On several occasions Schmitt engaged steadily in sustained confrontations with a number of authors, more often than not to the point of identifying himself with, and even of wearing the mask of, the counterpart. This is the case with at least six figures, each one being halfway between an alter ego and a Doppelgänger: three political philosophers, two fictional characters and a jurist. In order of historical appearance (real or fictional): Epimetheus (in the Christian version), Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, Juan Donoso Cortés, Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Benito Cereno. Still, sooner or later, everyone loses their magic, and Schmitt was no exception. This is why in his last long interview – he had just turned 95 and his health was failing – Schmitt took all his masks off and proudly claimed: ‘I feel one hundred percent a jurist and nothing else. And I do not want to be anything else. I am a jurist and I remain a jurist and I die as a jurist … .’1 This is his last will as well as his last self-interpretation.