Between 1888 and 1933, the United States of America functioned in the German-speaking world as a dream or a nightmare, as an embodiment of modernity and capitalism that was admired, despised or even feared. 14 essays explore the relationship of selected German-speaking poets, writers and publicists, scientists and architects of that time to the USA. Temperaments as diverse as Alfred Kubin and Stefan George, Ernst Jiinger and Erich Maria Remarque, Adolf Loos and Friedrich August von Hayek are discussed. Well-known authors such as Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth make appearances, but also lesser-known authors such as Bertha Eckstein-Diener, Marta Karlweis and Maria Leitner, Hugo Bettauer, Bernhard Kellermann and Arthur Rundt. "The volume draws a wide-ranging, methodologically diverse and extremely readable panorama of the debate on the USA in the literature and journalism of the German-speaking countries before and after the First World War." Prof. Wynfrid Kriegleder (Vienna)