This book, originally published in 1992, traces the discourse on the French Revolution in Germany and its contributors investigate the processes and results of adopting or rejecting the values of the French Revolution in Germany and reinterprets its documents in terms of their internalization. One of the questions discussed is whether the French Revolution is part of Germany's progressive tradition, that is, whether it has been repressed or whether it constitutes a viable counter-discourse within the political culture. The first successful revolution in Germany - the 'Velvet Revolution' of Autumn 1989 does not fit the definition of 'classic revolutions, but it ended in a change of power in Germany and in that respect, this book is an anatomy of German political consciousness before 1989.

This book, originally published in 1992, traces the discourse on the French Revolution in Germany and its contributors investigate the processes and results of adopting or rejecting the values of the French Revolution in Germany and reinterprets its documents in terms of their internalization. One of the questions discussed is whether the French Revolution is part of Germany's progressive tradition, that is, whether it has been repressed or whether it constitutes a viable counter-discourse within the political culture. The first successful revolution in Germany - the 'Velvet Revolution' of Autumn 1989 does not fit the definition of 'classic revolutions, but it ended in a change of power in Germany and in that respect, this book is an anatomy of German political consciousness before 1989.

Sixteen new, carefully focused essays on the prose works of one of the great writers of modernity. Thomas Mann is among the greatest of German prose writers, and was the first German novelist to reach a wide English-speaking readership since Goethe. Novels such as Buddenbrooks, The Magic Mountain, and Doktor Faustus attest to his mastery of subtle, distanced irony, while novellas such as Death in Venice reveal him at the height of his mastery of language. In addition to fresh insights about these best-known works of Mann, this volume treats less-often-discussed works such as Joseph and His Brothers, Lotte in Weimar, and Felix Krull, as well as his political writings and essays. Mann himself was a paradox: his role as family-father was both refuge and facade; his love of Germany was matched by his contempt for its having embraced Hitler. While in exile during the Nazi period, he functioned as the prime representative of the "good" Germany in the fight against fascism, and he has often been remembered this way in English-speaking lands. But a new view of Mann is emerging half a century after his death: a view of him as one of the great writers of a modernity understood as extending into our 21st century. This volume provides sixteen essays by American and European specialists. They demonstrate the relevance of his writings for our time, making particular use of the biographical material that is now available. Contributors: Ehrhard Bahr, Manfred Dierks, Werner Frizen, Clayton Koelb, Helmut Koopmann, Wolfgang Lederer, Hannelore Mundt, Peter Putz, Jens Rieckmann, Hans Joachim Sandberg, Egon Schwarz, and Hans Vaget. Herbert Lehnert is Research Professor, and Eva Wessell is Lecturer in Humanities, both at the University of California, Irvine.

New readings of a number of Goethe's works, book reviews, and a listing of North American Goethe dissertations 1989-1999. The Goethe Yearbook, first published in 1982, is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America and is dedicated to North American Goethe scholarship. It aims above all to encourage and publish original English-language contributions to the understanding of Goethe and other authors of the Goethezeit, while also welcoming contributions from scholars around the world. The book review section seeks likewise to evaluate a wide selection ofrecent publications on the period, and is important for all scholars of 18th-century literature. The contributions in volume 10 offer new readings of several of Goethe's works (in particular Goetz von Berlichingen, Faust, Italienische Reise, and the Wilhelm Meister novels), new perspectives on Goethe as a writer, and new understanding of Goethe's literary/cultural legacy. A supplement continues the listing of North American Goethe dissertations thathas been a feature of previous volumes to include the period 1989 to 1999, updating this unique bibliographical resource. Thomas P. Saine of the University of California, Irvine, has edited all the volumes of the Goethe Yearbook to date. Volume 10 was edited with the assistance of Simon J. Richter of the University of Pennsylvania, who will assume the editorship with volume 11. Ellis Dye of Macalester College is book review editor.

New, interdisciplinary essays on an array of topics ranging from Goethe and mineralogy to theories of masculinity around 1800. The Goethe Yearbook, first published in 1982, is a publication of the Goethe Society of North America and is dedicated to North American Goethe Scholarship. It aims above all to encourage and publish original English-language contributions to the understanding of Goethe and other authors of the Goethezeit, while also welcoming contributions from scholars around the world. Goethe Yearbook 15 features an array of interdisciplinary essays,among them articles on Goethe and such topics as architecture, mineralogy, theatrical improvisation, and Ulrich von Hutten. Readers will also find two astute and erudite interpretations of key poems, Alexis und Dora and Urworte. Orphisch, as well as a compelling exploration of the legal, social, and economic issues pertaining to the question: "Why Did Goethe Marry When He Did?" An interpretation of Goethe's Elective Affinities, two essays on Schiller's plays, and an incisive analysis by Peter Uwe Hohendahl titled "The New Man: Theories of Masculinity Around 1800" round out the volume. Contributors: Ehrhard Bahr, Yasser Derwiche Djazaerly, Robert Germany, Albert E. Gurganus, Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Jocelyn Hollnad, Borge Kristiansen, Elizabeth Powers, Daniel Purdy, Peter J. Schwartz, and Christoph Schweitzer Simon J. Richter is Professor of German at the University ofPennsylvania, and Daniel Purdy is Associate Professor of German at Pennsylvania State University. Book review editor Martha B. Helfer is Professor of German at Rutgers University.

New essays examining Goethe's relationship to the Jews, and the contribution of Jewish scholars to the fame of the greatest German writer. The success of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners(1997) and the heated debates that followed its publication exposed once again Germany's long tradition of anti-Semitism as a major cause of the Holocaust. Goldhagen, like many before him, drew a direct and irresistible line from Luther's pamphlets against the Jews to Hitler's attempted annihilation of European Jewry. This collection of new essays examines the thesis of a universal anti-Semitism in Germany by focussing on its greatest author, Goethe, and seeing to what extent some scholars are justified in accusing him of anti-Semitism. It places the reception of Goethe's works in a broader historical context: his relationship to Judaism and the Jews; the reception of his works by the Jewish elite in Germany, the reception of the 'Goethe cult' by Jewish scholars; and the Jewish contribution to Goethe scholarship. The last section of the volume treats the Jewish contribution to Goethe's fame and to Goethe philology since the 19th century, and the exodus of many Jewish authors and scholars after 1933, when they took their beloved Goethe into exile. When a few of them returned to Germany after 1945, it was to a country that had lost Goethe's most devoted audience, the German Jews. KLAUS L. BERGHAHN and JOST HERMAND are professors of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

New essays by top international Schiller scholars on the reception of the great German writer and dramatist, emphasizing his realist aspects. The works of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) -- an innovative and resonant tragedian and an important poet, essayist, historian, and aesthetic theorist -- are among the best known of German and world literature. Schiller's explosive original artistry and feel for timely and enduring personal tragedy embedded in timeless sociohistorical conflicts remain the topic of lively academic debate. The essays in this volume address the many flashpoints and canonicalshifts in the cyclically polarized reception of Schiller and his works, in pursuit of historical and contemporary answers to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's expression of frightened admiration in 1794: "Who is this Schiller?" The responses demonstrate pronounced shifts from widespread twentieth-century understandings of Schiller: the overwhelming emphasis here is on Schiller the cosmopolitan realist, and little or no trace is left of the ultimately untenable view of Schiller as an abstract idealist who turned his back on politics. Contributors: Ehrhard Bahr, Matthew Bell, Frederick Burwick, Jennifer Driscoll Colosimo, Bernd Fischer, Gail K. Hart, Fritz Heuer, Hans H. Hiebel, Jeffrey L. High, Walter Hinderer, Paul E. Kerry, Erik B. Knoedler, Elisabeth Krimmer, Maria del Rosario Acosta Lopez, Laura Anna Macor, Dennis F. Mahoney, Nicholas Martin, John A. McCarthy, Yvonne Nilges, Norbert Oellers, Peter Pabisch, David Pugh, T. J. Reed, Wolfgang Riedel, Joerg Robert, Ritchie Robertson, Jeffrey L. Sammons, Henrik Sponsel. Jeffrey L. High is Associate Professor of German Studies at California State University Long Beach, Nicholas Martin is Reader in European Intellectual History at the University of Birmingham, and Norbert Oellers is Professor Emeritus of German Literature at the University of Bonn.

In the 1930s and 40s, Los Angeles became an unlikely cultural sanctuary for a distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals--including Thomas Mann, Theodore W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, and Arnold Schoenberg--who had fled Nazi Germany. During their years in exile, they would produce a substantial body of major works to address the crisis of modernism that resulted from the rise of National Socialism. Weimar Germany and its culture, with its meld of eighteenth-century German classicism and twentieth-century modernism, served as a touchstone for this group of diverse talents and opinions.
"Weimar on the Pacific" is the first book to examine these artists and intellectuals as a group. Ehrhard Bahr studies selected works of Adorno, Horkheimer, Brecht, Lang, Neutra, Schindler, Doblin, Mann, and Schoenberg, weighing Los Angeles's influence on them and their impact on German modernism. Touching on such examples as film noir and Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus," Bahr shows how this community of exiles reconstituted modernism in the face of the traumatic political and historical changes they were living through.