New essays providing a in-depth view of the many facets of the great world poet's work. Friedrich Schiller is not merely one of Germany's foremost poets. He is also one of the major German contributors to world literature. The undying words he gave to characters such as Marquis Posa in Don Carlos and Wilhelm Tell in the eponymous drama continue to underscore the need for human freedom. Schiller cultivated hope in the actualization of moral knowledge through aesthetic education and critical reflection, leading to his ideal of a more humane humanity. At the same time, he was fully cognizant of the problems that attend various forms of idealism. Yet for Schiller, ultimately, love remains the gravitational center of the universe and of human existence, and beyond life and death joy prevails. This collection of cutting-edge essays by some of the world's leading Schiller experts constitutes a milestone in scholarship. It includes in-depth discussions of the writer's major dramatic and poeticworks, his essays on aesthetics, and his activities as historian, anthropologist, and physiologist, as well as of his relation to the ancients and of Schiller reception in 20th-century Germany. Contributors: Steven D.Martinson, Walter Hinderer, David Pugh, Otto Dann, Werner von Stransky-Stranka-Greifenfels, J. M. van der Laan, Rolf-Peter Janz, Lesley Sharpe, Norbert Oellers, Dieter Borchmeyer, Karl S. Guthke, Wulf Koepke. Steven D.Martinson is Professor of German at the University of Arizona.

Volume 12 is dedicated to founding editor Thomas P. Saine, and includes essays on Goethe's novels, plays, and poems, the Ilmpark, Bach, Ossian, Goethe reception, and Schiller. 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. Volume 12 honors founding editor Thomas P. Saine with contributions from prominent scholars such as Ehrhard Bahr, Benjamin Bennett, Dieter Borchmeyer, Jane Brown, Jill Kowalik, Ruth Kluger, Meredith Lee, John McCarthy, Jeff Sammons, Helmut Schneider, Hans Vaget, and more. The volume includes essays on Goethe's novels, plays, and poems, the Ilmpark, Bach, Ossian, Goethe reception, and Schiller. Simon J. Richter is associate professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Book review editor Martha B. Helfer is associate professor of German at the University of Utah.

Richard Wagner continues to be the most controversial artist in history, a perpetually troubling figure in our cultural consciousness. The unceasing debate over his works and their impact--for and against--is one reason why there has been no genuinely comprehensive modern account of his musical dramas until now. Dieter Borchmeyer's book is the first to present an overall picture of these musical dramas from the standpoint of literary and theatrical history. It extends from the composer's early works--still largely ignored--to the "Ring Cycle and Parsifal," and includes Wagner's unfinished works and operas he never set to music. Through lively prose, we come to see Wagner as a librettist--and as a man of letters--rather than primarily as musical composer.

Borchmeyer uncovers a vast field of cultural and historical cross-references in Wagner's works. In the first part of the book, he sets out in search of the various archetypal scenes, opening up the composer's dramatic workshop to the reader. He covers all of Wagner's operas, from early juvenilia to the canonical later works.

The second part examines Wagner in relation to political figures including King Ludwig II and Bismarck, and, importantly, in light of critical reactions by literary giants--Thomas Mann, whom Borchmeyer calls "a guiding light in this exploration of the fields that Wagner tilled," and Nietzsche, whose appeal to "philology" is a key source of inspiration in attempts to grapple with Wagner's works.

For more than twenty years, Borchmeyer has placed his scholarship at the service of the famed Bayreuth Festival. With this volume, he gives us a summation of decades of engagement with the phenomenon of Wagner and, at the same time, the result of an abiding critical passion for his works.

New essays providing an account of the shaping beliefs, preoccupations, motifs, and values of Weimar Classicism. In Germany, Weimar Classicism (roughly the period from Goethe's return to Germany from Italy in 1788 to the death of his friend and collaborator Schiller in 1805) is widely regarded as an apogee of literary art. But outside of Germany, Goethe is considered a Romantic, and the notion of Weimar Classicism as a distinct period is viewed with skepticism. This volume of new essays regards the question of literary period as a red herring: Weimar Classicism is best understood as a project that involved the ambitious attempt not only to imagine but also to achieve a new quality of wholeness in human life and culture at a time when fragmentation, division, and alienation appeared to be thenorm. By not succumbing to the myth of Weimar and its literary giants, but being willing to explore the phenomenon as a complex cultural system with a unique signature, this book provides an account of its shaping beliefs, preoccupations, motifs, and values. Contributions from leading German, British, and North American scholars open up multiple interdisciplinary perspectives on the period. Essays on the novel, poetry, drama, and theater are joined by accounts of politics, philosophy, visual culture, women writers, and science. The reader is introduced to the full panoply of cultural life in Weimar, its accomplishments as well as its excesses and follies. Emancipatory and doctrinaire by turns, the project of Weimar Classicism is best approached as a complex whole. Contributors: Dieter Borchmeyer, Charles Grair, Gail Hart, Thomas Saine, Jane Brown, Cyrus Hamlin, Roger Stephenson, Elisabeth Krimmer, Helmut Pfotenhauer, Benjamin Bennett, Astrida Orle Tantillo, W. Daniel Wilson. Simon J. Richter is Associate Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania.

Am 26.09.1945 ist Richard Beer-Hofmann im New Yorker Exil gestorben. Aus Anlass seines 50. Todestages fand in Heidelberg auf Anregung der Hochschule fur Judische Studien und in Verbindung mit dem Germanischen Seminar der Universitat ein Symposium in der Akademie der Wissenschaften statt, das um die Pole Asthetizismus und Judentum im Werk Beer-Hofmanns kreiste. Die Beitrage dieses Symposiums sind in diesem Band vorgelegt. Abgerundet wird das Buch durch die Wiedergabe des Gesprachs, dass Werner Vordtriede mit Richard Beer-Hofmann in den Jahren vor dessen Tod in New York fuhrte, sowie durch bis dato unveroffentlichte Briefe Beer-Hofmanns

Richard Wagner has come to be seen as the quintessential artist of the nineteenth-century, whose work embraces all the arts of the period. Dieter Borchmeyer here provides the first systematic and comprehensive account of Wagner's aesthetic theory, examining his hitherto neglected prose writings and his ideas on music drama from the various standpoints of literature, the linking of ideas, and the sociology of art. The pre-eminent importance for Wagner of classical Greek art and mythology emerges with particular clarity, while his links with the great figures and forms of world theatre - Shakespeare, the commedia dell'arte, the popular theatre, and the puppet theatre - are traced in detail. The influence on Wagner of the historical and social novel is also discussed. The author provides the first comprehensive analysis of Cosima Wagner's Diaries, and throws unexpected sidelights on Wagner's relationship with Nietzsche.

First published in German in 1982, this book has become established as a standard work of Wagner scholarship, and now appears for the first time in English in a completely revised edition incorporating a number of new chapters on the music dramas.

In dieser Studie stellt der Autor Fausts Werdegang vom Gelehrten zum OEkonomen, Landesplaner und Unternehmer dar und zeigt durch die innovative "geographische Deutung" des funften Akts, inwiefern durch Fausts Neulandgewinnung eine bluhende Kulturlandschaft hat entstehen koennen. Bislang bestand in der Faust-Forschung weitgehend Konsens daruber, dass Faust am Ende des Dramas ein Egomane und ein Illusionist ist und dass dessen Neulandprojekt scheitern wird. Der Autor zeigt hier, dass ganz im Gegenteil Fausts wirtschaftliches Wirken und damit sein ganzes Leben (trotz so mancher Schattenseiten) von Erfolg gekroent ist. Durch diese neue Sichtweise weist das Buch den Weg zu einem positiven Faust-Bild.

In ihrem Buch setzt sich Dorothee Treiber kritisch mit der weitverbreiteten These auseinander, Hugo von Hofmannsthals Elektra leide an einer klinischen Hysterie. Der Autorin zufolge halt diese Behauptung einer eingehenden Analyse der Quellenlage nicht stand. Dagegen wird deutlich, dass Wien zur Jahrhundertwende von zwei spektakularen Kindesmisshandlungsskandalen erschuttert wurde. Dass diese auch in Hofmannsthals Theaterstuck Spuren hinterlassen haben, soll hier gezeigt werden. Daruber hinaus wird deutlich, dass sich seine Bearbeitung nahtlos in die Tradition der Elektratragoedien einfugt und Freuds Hysteriekonzeption alles andere als Vorbildcharakter hatte. Untersucht wird auch der Einfluss der Tagespresse sowie der Schriften Tardieus uber Kindesmisshandlung und Missbrauch.

Keine Periode in Hoelderlins Leben erscheint den Biographen und Interpreten so ratselhaft und dennoch von Konsequenzen belastet (das Irresein) wie die Frankreichreise von Strassburg uber Lyon nach Bordeaux, der Aufenthalt dort beim Consul Meyer und die Ruckkehr (mit Raububerfall, daher Weiterreise zu Fuss) uber Paris und Strassburg. Aus Untersuchungen in franzoesischen Archiven ergaben sich zahlreiche neue Details, die auch wichtig fur die Interpretation einiger spater Hymnen werden. Ausserdem wird Hoelderlins Verhaltnis zu Rousseau, Hemsterhuis, Helvetius und zur Franzoesischen Revolution aus der Deutung des Gesamtwerks neu gewichtet.