Lepenies The Seduction of Culture in German History

Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-2703-9
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

No detailed description available for "The Seduction of Culture in German History".

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lepenies, Wolf

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction Bombs over Dresden and the Rosenkavalier in the Skies 1

Chapter 1: Culture: A Noble Substitute 9
Lessons in Diminished Particularity 9
A Strange Indifference to Politics 11
The German Spirit and the German Reich 16

Chapter 2: From the Republic into Exile 27
Reflections of a Political Thomas Mann 27
The Aesthetic Appeal of Fascism 36
Art and Morality 45
The Blurring of Exile and Emigration 48

Chapter 3: Novalis and Walt Whitman: German Romanticism and American Democracy 56
A Country without an Opera 56
Joseph in America 60
German Democratic Vistas 63
Emerson's Sponsors: Beethoven & Bettina 70

Chapter 4: German Culture Abroad: Victorious in Defeat 76
The Closing of the American Mind 76
The German Mind in Jeopardy 85
A Calm Good-Bye to Europe 88

Chapter 5: French-German Culture Wars 93
Two Revolutions 93
Goethe in Exile 98
"Culture Wars" and Their Origin 100
A Puzzle in the History of Sociology 105
A Mediator: Maurice Halbwachs 107
An Expulsion from Berlin 110
The Murder of Maurice Halbwachs 112
Strange Defeat 114
Intellectual Resistance 116
Limits of the German Revolution 122

Chapter 6: German Culture at Home: A Moral Failure Turned to Intellectual Advantage 128
The German Catastrophe 128
The Resurrection of Culture 134
Inner Emigration and Its Discontents 138
German and Jewish Diaspora 145

Chapter 7: The Survival of the Typical German: Faust versus Mephistopheles 154
Goethe in the Polls 154
Goethe after 1945 159

Chapter 8: German Reunification: The Failure of the Interpreting Class 165
Cultural Guardians 165
Intellectual Disaster in the East 167
Intellectual Tragicomedy 170

Chapter 9: Culture as Camouflage: The End of Central Europe 176
Europe: Dream and Bureaucracy 176
A Victory of Culture over Power 178

Chapter 10: Irony and Politics: Cultural Patriotism in Europe and the United States 186
An American Patriot from Europe 186
Hamlet and Fortinbras 190
European Pygmies and the American Giant 195
The Irony of American History 196

Chapter 11: Germany after Reunification: In Search of a Moral Masterpiece 200
Culture and Realpolitik 200
Solving Political Problems in the Field of Culture 203

Notes 211
Bibliography 237
Acknowledgments 249
Index 251

Über Autor(innen)

Wolf Lepenies is one of Germany's foremost intellectuals. He served as Rector of the Wissenschaftskolleg, the German Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (1986-2001), where he is now a Permanent Fellow. Lepenies is also Professor of Sociology at the Free University in Berlin, and he spent several years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is the author of numerous books and writes regularly for the German national newspaper Die Welt.