Eighteenth-century Europe witnessed a commercialization of culture
as it became less courtly and more urban. The marketing of culture
became separate from the production of culture. New cultural
entrepreneurs entered the stage: the impresario, the publisher, the
book seller, the art dealer, the auction house, and the reading
society served as middlemen between producers and consumers of
culture, and constituted at the same time the beginning of a
cultural service sector. Cultural consumption also played a
substantial role in creating social identity. One could demonstrate
social status by attending an auction, watching a play, or
listening to a concert. Moreover, and eventually more significant,
one could demonstrate connoisseurship and taste, which became
important indicators of social standing. The centres of cultural
exchange and consumption were initially the great cities of Europe.
In the course of the eighteenth century, however, cultural
consumption penetrated much deeper, for example into the numerous
residential and university towns in Germany, where a growing number
of functional elites and burghers met in coffee houses and reading
societies, attended the theatre and opera, and performed orchestral
and chamber music together. Journals, novels and letters were also
crucial in forming consumer culture in provincial Germany: as the
German states were remote from the cultural life of England and
France, the material reality of London and Paris often passed as a
literary construction to Germany. It is against this background,
and stimulated by the research of John Brewer on England, that the
book systematically explores this field for the first time in
regard to the Continent, and especially to eighteenth-century
Germany. Michael North focuses, chapter by chapter, on the new
forms of entertainment (concerts, theatre, opera, reading
societies, travelling) on the one hand and on the new material
culture (fashion, gardens, country houses, furniture) on the other.
At the centre of the discussion is the reception of English culture
on the Continent, and the competition between English and French
fashions in the homes of German elites and burghers attracts
special attention. The book closes with an investigation of the
role of cultural consumption for identity formation, demonstrating
the integration of Germany into a European cultural identity during
the eighteenth century.
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