In the present work, a coordinate-free way is suggested to handle conformal maps of a Rie­mannian sur­face into a space of constant curvature of maximum dimension 4, modeled on the non-commutative field of quaternions. This setup for the target space and the idea to treat dif­fe­rential 2-forms on Rie­mannian surfaces as quadratic functions on the tangent space, are the starting points for the development of the theory of conformal maps and in particular of con­formal immersions. As a first result, very nice condi­tions for the conformality of immersions into 3- and 4-dimensional space-forms are deduced and a sim­ple way to write the second fun­damental form is found.

If the target space is euclidean 3-space, an alternative approach is proposed by fixing a spin structure on the Rie­mannian surface. The problem of finding a local immersion is then reduced to that of solving a linear Dirac equation with a potential whose square is the Willmore in­tegrand. This allows to make statements about the structure of the moduli space of conformal immersions and to derive a very nice criterion for a conformal immersion to be con­strained Willmore. As an application the Dirac equation with constant potential over spheres and tori is solved. This yields explicit immersion formulae out of which there were produced pictures, the Dirac-spheres and -tori. These immersions have the property that their Willmore integrand generates a metric of vanishing and constant curvature, respectively.

As a next step an affine immersion theory is developped. This means, one starts with a given conformal immersion into euclidean 3-space and looks for new ones in the same conformal class. This is called a spin-transformation and it leads one to solve an affine Dirac equation. Also, it is shown how the coordi­nate-dependent generalized Weierstrass representation fits into the present framework. In particular, it is now natural to consider the class of conformal im­mersions that admit new conformal immersions having the same potential. It turns out, that all geometri­cally interesting immersions admit such an isopotential spin-transformation and that this property of an immersion is even a conformal invariant of the ambient space.

It is shown that conformal isothermal immersions generate both via their dual and via Darboux trans­formations non-trivial families of new isopotential conformal immersions. Similarly to this, conformal (constrained) Willmore immersions produce non-trivial families of isopotential im­mer­sions of which subfamilies are (constrained) Willmore again having even the same Will­more integral. Another obser­vation is, that the Euler-Lagrange equation for the Willmore pro­blem is the integrability condition for a quaternionic 1-form, which generates a conformal mi­nimal im­mersions into hyperbolic 4-space. Vice versa, any such immersion determines a con­formal Willmore immersion. As a conse­quence, there is a one-to-one correspondence between con­formal minimal immersions into Lorentzian space and those into hyperbolic space, which gene­ralizes to any dimension. There is also induced an action on conformal minimal immersi­ons into hyperbolic 4-space. Another fact is, that conformal con­stant mean curvature (cmc) immersions into some 3-dimensional space form unveil to be isothermal and constrained Will­more. The reverse statement is true at least for tori. Finally a very simple proof of a theorem by R.Bryant concer­ning Willmore spheres is given.

In the last part, time-dependent conformal immersions are considered. Their deformation for­mulae are computed and it is investigated under what conditions the flow commutes with Moe­bius transforma­tions. The modified Novikov-Veselov flow is written down in a conformal in­variant way and explicit deformation formulae for the immersion function itself and all of its invariants are given. This flow commutes with Moebius transformations. Its definition is cou­pled with a delta-bar problem, for which a so­lution is presented under special conditions. These are fulfilled at least by cmc immersions and by sur­faces of revolution and the general flow for­mulae reduce to very nice formulae in these cases.