This multidisciplinary collection of readings offers new interpretations of Richard Wagner's ideological position in German history. The issues discussed range from the biographical - the reasons for Wagner's travels, his political life - to the aesthetic and ideological, regarding his re-creation of medieval Nuremberg, his representations of gender and nationality, his vocal iconography, his anti-Semitism, his vegetarian and Christian arguments, and, finally, his musical heirs. The essays avoid journalistic or iconoclastic approaches to Wagner, and depart from the usual uncritical admiration of earlier scholars in an attempt to develop a stimulating and ultimately cohesive collection of new perspectives.

BETWEEN 1933 AND 1945 MEMBERS OF THREE GROUPS-THE Nazi fascists, Inner Emigration, and Exiles-fought with equal fervor over who could definitively claim to represent the authentically "great German culture," as it was culture that imparted real value to both the state and the individual. But when authorities made pronouncements about "culture" were they really talking about high art? This book analyzes the highly complex interconnections among the cultural-political concepts of these various ideological groups and asks why the most artistically ambitious art forms were viewed as politically important by all cultured (or even semi-cultured) Germans in the period from 1933 to 1945, with their ownership the object of a bitter struggle between key figures in the Nazi fascist regime, representatives of Inner Emigration, and Germans driven out of the Third Reich.

"This volume epitomizes Jost Hermand's inimitable talent of synthesizing wide-ranging disciplines in an accessible and compelling style, bringing to life the experiences of musicians and their public in the context of their own times. These essays also give us a glimpse into how his own life experiences created the hunger for culture that defined his long and illustrious career." (Pamela M. Potter, Professor of German and Musicology, University of Wisconsin-Madison) "Jost Hermand's final book is an enormously rich gift to posterity. The fifteen essays on musical culture that constitute this collection contain brief but illuminating glimpses of the whole glorious parade of serious music and those who composed, cultivated, and commented on it in the German lands, from Buxtehude to Stockhausen and beyond. His insight and well-observed contextualization reveals a lifetime of scholarship and experience." (Celia Applegate, Professor of History, Vanderbilt University) In contrast to the writings of many other musicologists, this book is not primarily concerned with the biographies of certain composers or a structural analysis of their major compositions, but rather with the stands they took in the ideological struggles during their lifetimes and how these affected some of their most important works. Beginning with the late seventeenth century, special emphasis is thereby given to Pietism, orthodox Lutheranism, the impact of the French Revolution, the restrictive measures of the Metternich period, the Wilhelminian era, Expressionism, the New Objectivity and the materialist aesthetics of the Weimar Republic, fascism, exile and the modernism of the early Federal Republic of Germany.

Das vorliegende Buch bietet hermeneutische und phanomenologische Reflexionen uber das Kunstwerk aus der Sicht sowohl des Kunstlers - als Schaffendem - als auch des Rezipienten. Eroertert werden die Materialitat des Kunstwerks, Bronze, Marmor, Farbe und Klang sowie die Frage nach Nietzsches Artistenmetaphysik. In einem Kernkapitel wird eine neue Lesart von Nietzsches Zarathustra und dessen plastischem Begriff des Erhabenen vorgestellt. Auf Basis von Elementen der klassischen kritischen Theorie werden wiederum Nietzsche und Marx gegeneinander gelesen. Die letzten Kapitel zeigen ein nahezu erotisches Spannungsverhaltnis auf zwischen Nietzsche und Georges Batailles " Wille zur Chance " sowie der Erfindung der Frau bei Simone de Beauvoir. Die UEberlegungen schliessen mit einem esoterischen Blick auf Nietzsches Lehre von der Ewigen Wiederkunft.

BETWEEN 1933 AND 1945 MEMBERS OF THREE GROUPS-THE Nazi fascists, Inner Emigration, and Exiles-fought with equal fervor over who could definitively claim to represent the authentically "great German culture," as it was culture that imparted real value to both the state and the individual. But when authorities made pronouncements about "culture" were they really talking about high art? This book analyzes the highly complex interconnections among the cultural-political concepts of these various ideological groups and asks why the most artistically ambitious art forms were viewed as politically important by all cultured (or even semi-cultured) Germans in the period from 1933 to 1945, with their ownership the object of a bitter struggle between key figures in the Nazi fascist regime, representatives of Inner Emigration, and Germans driven out of the Third Reich.

This book traces the development of the monist world-view in Germany from the Age of Goethe to the 1920s. Originally a core idea in the philosophy of Spinoza, monism, the idea of a universe of one substance that is both mind and matter, inspired many German thinkers from Goethe to Fechner, especially the infamous social Darwinist Ernst Haeckel. This study contrasts Haeckel's monism with the more benign monist world-views of his predecessors and of his socialist and left-liberal contemporaries and followers, above all Bruno Wille and Wilhelm Bolsche.

Focusing on the ideological contradictions inherent in the German alliance with Japan during World War II, this book analyses German discourse about Japan from the distinct yet intricately connected standpoints of the German-Japanese historical relationship, the scientific and pseudo-scientific presentation of Japan in Germany, and German fictional depictions of Japan. The volume examines the historical relationship between Germany and Japan in the light of their alliance. It also traces the origins and development of the image of Japan in Nazi Germany. Through non-fiction texts, the points of emphasis, friction, and outright contradiction are discovered between Nazi ideology and an alliance with Japan as they were discussed both publicly and privately in Germany at the time. Finally, by examining fictional depictions of Japan and the Japanese under the Nazis, the work reveals the means by which fiction addressed these ideological issues and incorporated the historical and non-fictional arguments of its contemporaries. This book looks carefully at its connection to other historical, political, racial, and ideological thought of the time.

The rich conceptual and experiential relays between music and philosophy--echoes of what Theodor W. Adorno once called "Klangfiguren," or "sound figures"--resonate with heightened intensity during the period of modernity that extends from early German Idealism to the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. This volume traces the political, historical, and philosophical trajectories of a specifically German tradition in which thinkers take recourse to music, both as an aesthetic practice and as the object of their speculative work.
The contributors examine the texts of such highly influential writers and thinkers as Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bloch, Mann, Adorno, and Lukacs in relation to individual composers including Beethoven, Wagner, Schonberg, and Eisler. Their explorations of the complexities that arise in conceptualizing music as a mode of representation and philosophy as a mode of aesthetic practice thematize the ways in which the fields of music and philosophy are altered when either attempts to express itself in terms defined by the other.
Contributors: Albrecht Betz, Lydia Goehr, Beatrice Hanssen, Jost Hermand, David Farrell Krell, Ludger Lutkehaus, Margaret Moore, Rebekah Pryor Pare, Gerhard Richter, Hans Rudolf Vaget, Samuel Weber

Eight essays, two in German, revised from presentations at a November 1998 workshop at the University of Wisconsin consider whether the nearly total neglect of German painter, filmmaker, essays, novelist, and dramatist Weiss (1916-ca.1982) since the end of the Cold War can be and should be reversed. He was a committed socialist who burst on the scene in 1964 with his film Marat/Sade and dealt with many social and political themes during his career.

Newest volume of the central scholarly forum for discussion of Brecht and aspects of theater and literature of particular interest to him, especially the politics of literature and theater in a global context. Now published for the International Brecht Society by Camden House under the Society's editorship, the Brecht Yearbook is the central scholarly forum for discussion of the life and work of Bertolt Brecht and of aspects of theater and literature that were of particular interest to him, especially the politics of literature and theater in a global context. The Yearbook welcomes a wide variety of perspectives and approaches, and, like Brecht himself, it is committed to the use value of literature, theater, and theory. Volume 40 features new research on Brechtian concepts of temporality (Matthias Rothe) and the apparatus (Thomas Pekar), as well as articles on the "Bilder aus der Kriegsfibel" (Arnold Pistiak), the poem "Die Nachtlager" (Klaus-Dieter Krabiel), Brecht and Peruvian theater (Carlos Vargas-Salgado), early Brecht productions in Australia (Laura Ginters), and Brecht and Karl Kraus (Jost Hermand). Biographically oriented pieces focus on Brecht and the Chinese author Feng Zhi (Lin Cheng) and an unpublished letter to Brecht from 1918 (Jurgen Hillesheim). Special contents include a portfolio of drawings by DieterGoltzsche, with a brief introduction by the artist, a tribute to Sara Joffre, a brief set of texts related to the exchanges between Hanns Eisler and Hans Bunge, introduced by Sabine Berendse, and an open letter to Brecht from Hans-Thies Lehmann and Helene Varopoulou. Theodore F. Rippey is Associate Professor of German at Bowling Green State University.

Explores the storytelling of Anna Seghers and other 20th-century writers who faced the tensions between aesthetics and politically conscious writing, between conformity and resistance. While Walter Benjamin, in his famous essay "The Storyteller" (1936), lamented the decline of the storytelling tradition in the age of the modernist novel, Anna Seghers and other twentieth-century German writers went on to chronicle the century's darkest days in creative and compelling ways. This volume is at its heart a tribute to Germanist Helen Fehervary, whose work, particularly on the prose of Anna Seghers, continues to inspire scholars who examine narration and storytelling. The subtitle quotation, "for once, telling it all from the beginning," is a translation of the phrase "einmal alles von Anfang an erzahlen," from Seghers's exile novel Transit, in which she told notonly her own story but that of countless others who faced existential challenges in their attempts to escape the Nazi regime. This volume examines a number of such writers, exploring the tensions between aesthetics and politically conscious writing, as well as individual struggles involving conformity and resistance in a totalitarian state. Contributors: Peter Beicken, Hunter Bivens, Kristy R. Boney, Ute Brandes, Stephen Brockmann, Sylvia Fischer, Jost Hermand, Kristen Hetrick, Robert C. Holub, Weijia Li, Elizabeth Loentz, Michaela Peroutkova, Benjamin Robinson, Christiane Zehl Romero, Marc Silberman, Andy Spencer, Luke Springman, Amy Kepple Strawser, Jennifer Marston William. Kristy R. Boney is Associate Professor of German at the University of Central Missouri. Jennifer Marston William is Professor of German and Head of the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue University.

New essays on the most prominent German dramatist and short-story writer of the early 19th century. For over 150 years, Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) has been one of the most widely read and performed German authors. His status in the literary canon is firmly established, but he has always been one of Germany's most contentiously discussed authors. Today's critical debate on his unique prose narratives and dramas is as heated as ever. Many critics regard Kleist as a lone presager of the aesthetics and philosophies of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century modernism. Yet there can be no question that he responds in his works and letters to the philosophical, aesthetic, and political debates of his time. During the last thirty years, the scholarship on Kleist's work and life has departed from the existentialist wave of the 1950s and early 1960s and opened up new avenues for coming to terms with his unusual talent. The present volume brings together the most important and innovative of these newer scholarly approaches: the essays include critically informed, up-to-date interpretations of Kleist's most-discussed stories and dramas. Other contributions analyze Kleist's literary means and styles and their theoretical underpinnings. They include articles on Kleist's narrative and theatrical technique, poetic and aesthetic theory, philosophical and political thought, and insights from new biographical research. Contributors: Jeffrey L. Sammons,Jost Hermand, Anthony Stephens, Bianca Theisen, Hinrich C. Seeba, Bernhard Greiner, Helmut J. Schneider, Tim Mehigan, Susanne Zantop, Hilda M. Brown, and Sean Allan. Bernd Fischer is Professor of German and Head of theDepartment of German at Ohio State 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.

Das "gespenstische Nachleben" des Faschismus beklagt 1959 der Philosoph Theodor W. Adorno; dass die "deutsche Nachkriegsliteratur" ebendies zu ihrem Thema gemacht hat, konstatiert wenig spater der Erzahler Heinrich Boell. Die mehr als zwanzig Essays dieses Bandes, verfasst zwischen 1980 und 2012, spuren diesem historischen, sozialpsychologischen und literarischen Zusammenhang nach. Sie zeigen, wie die westdeutsche "Nachkriegsliteratur" wegweisend und stellvertretend fur Staat und Gesellschaft agierte, die sich dieser Aufgabe nur zoegerlich stellten. Stand dabei zunachst die Kriegserfahrung im Vordergrund, so ruckte Mitte der 1960er Jahre der spater so benannte Holocaust in den Blick, und wieder sind es dann Literatur und Theater, die der juristischen und wissenschaftlichen "Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit" wichtige Impulse geben und sie verstarken. Dieser Band geht diesen Fragen im historischen UEberblick wie in detaillierten Einzelanalysen nach; besonderes Interesse gilt Klassikern der Nachkriegsliteratur wie Heinrich Boell und Peter Weiss, aber auch Autoren der nachfolgenden Generation wie Bernward Vesper, Christoph Meckel oder Uwe Timm. Die Studien fragen nach der historischen Leistung der Nachkriegsliteratur, ihrem Beitrag zu einer post- und nichtfaschistischen deutschen Identitat, aber auch nach ihren Defiziten und Unzulanglichkeiten, und reflektieren schliesslich ihre Abloesung durch vielfaltige neue Themen, Formen und Schreibweisen seit Anfang der 1980er Jahre.

Gathers lyric poems, satire, and essays about the German countryside and literature, by the nineteenth-century romantic poet.>

Up to the end of the nineteenth century, Germany largely perceived itself as the nation of poets and philosophers. But with the enormous popularity of Schubert and Wagner, this began to change. Suddenly, composers also began to play a greater role in theories of national identity, and music theory became and important element of German thought. The essays in this volume reflect this, and are by a range of writers: Adorno, Bloch, Thomas Mann, Wachenroder, Herder, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Hegel, Bettina von Arnim, Nietzsche, Max Weber, Brecht, and others.>

The German Library is a new series of the major works of German literature and thought from medieval times to the present. The volumes have forewords by internationally known writers and introductions by prominent scholars. Here the English-speaking reader can find the broadest possible collection of poetic and intellectual achievements in new as well as great classic translations. Convenient and accessible in format, the volumes of The German Library will form the core of any growing library of European literature for years to come.

Gathers selections from letters, essays, criticism, and autobiographies by Telemann, Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schuman, Liszt, Wagner, Brahms, and Mahler.

This volume brings together the papers presented at a conference entitled 'Experiencing the Garden in the Eighteenth Century', held at the Institute of Romance Studies, Senate House, University of London on 13 March 2004. Speakers came from Europe, the United States and New Zealand, and each gave a very different perspective on the eighteenth-century landscape garden in England, France and elsewhere in Europe. The papers focused on the theme of experience, an especially important aspect of eighteenth-century garden design. Landscape gardens were created for visitors to move through on a journey from one place to the next: the garden would not be seen all at once, but would be experienced as a story unfolding. The visitor would follow a circuit around the garden, moving from light to shade, being given suggestive prompts with statues, temples and viewpoints, as if on a sensory, emotional and intellectual journey.