The Seduction of Culture in German History / / Wolf Lepenies.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter PUP eBook-Package 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Lepenies, Wolf,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2009]; ©2006
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

During the Allied bombing of Germany, Hitler was more distressed by the loss of cultural treasures than by the leveling of homes. Remarkably, his propagandists broadcast this fact, convinced that it would reveal not his callousness but his sensitivity: the destruction had failed to crush his artist's spirit. It is impossible to begin to make sense of this thinking without understanding what Wolf Lepenies calls The Seduction of Culture in German History. This fascinating and unusual book tells the story of an arguably catastrophic German habit--that of valuing cultural achievement above all else and envisioning it as a noble substitute for politics. Lepenies examines how this tendency has affected German history from the late eighteenth century to today. He argues that the German preference for art over politics is essential to understanding the peculiar nature of Nazism, including its aesthetic appeal to many Germans (and others) and the fact that Hitler and many in his circle were failed artists and intellectuals who seem to have practiced their politics as a substitute form of art. In a series of historical, intellectual, literary, and artistic vignettes told in an essayistic style full of compelling aphorisms, this wide-ranging book pays special attention to Goethe and Thomas Mann, and also contains brilliant discussions of such diverse figures as Novalis, Walt Whitman, Leo Strauss, and Allan Bloom. The Seduction of Culture in German History is concerned not only with Germany, but with how the German obsession with culture, sense of cultural superiority, and scorn of politics have affected its relations with other countries, France and the United States in particular.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- INTRODUCTION. Bombs over Dresden and the Rosenkavalier in the Skies -- 1. Culture: A Noble Substitute -- 2. From the Republic into Exile -- 3. Novalis and Walt Whitman: German Romanticism and American Democracy -- 4. German Culture Abroad: Victorious in Defeat -- 5. French-German Culture Wars -- 6. German Culture at Home: A Moral Failure Turned to Intellectual Advantage -- 7. The Survival of the Typical German: Faust versus Mephistopheles -- 8. German Reunification: The Failure of the Interpreting Class -- 9. Culture as Camouflage: The End of Central Europe -- 10. Irony and Politics: Cultural Patriotism in Europe and the United States -- 11. Germany after Reunification: In Search of a Moral Masterpiece -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INDEX