The German Discovery of the World

The German Discovery of the World PDF Author: Christine R. Johnson
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813927121
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Current historiography suggests that European nations regarded the New World as an inassimilable "other" that posed fundamental challenges to the accepted ideas of Renaissance culture. The German Discovery of the World presents a new interpretation that emphasizes the ways in which the new lands and peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas were imagined as comprehensible and familiar. In chapters dedicated to travel narratives, cosmography, commerce, and medical botany, Johnson examines how existing ideas and methods were deployed to make German commentators experts in the overseas world, and how this incorporation established the discoveries as new and important intellectual, commercial, and scientific developments. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book brings to light the dynamic world of the German Renaissance, in which humanists, cartographers, reformers, politicians, botanists, and merchants appropriated the Portuguese and Spanish expeditions to the East and West Indies for their own purposes and, in so doing, reshaped their world. Studies in Early Modern German History

The German Discovery of the World

The German Discovery of the World PDF Author: Christine R. Johnson
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813927121
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Get Book Here

Book Description
Current historiography suggests that European nations regarded the New World as an inassimilable "other" that posed fundamental challenges to the accepted ideas of Renaissance culture. The German Discovery of the World presents a new interpretation that emphasizes the ways in which the new lands and peoples in Africa, Asia, and the Americas were imagined as comprehensible and familiar. In chapters dedicated to travel narratives, cosmography, commerce, and medical botany, Johnson examines how existing ideas and methods were deployed to make German commentators experts in the overseas world, and how this incorporation established the discoveries as new and important intellectual, commercial, and scientific developments. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book brings to light the dynamic world of the German Renaissance, in which humanists, cartographers, reformers, politicians, botanists, and merchants appropriated the Portuguese and Spanish expeditions to the East and West Indies for their own purposes and, in so doing, reshaped their world. Studies in Early Modern German History

Einstein's German World

Einstein's German World PDF Author: Fritz Stern
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691214069
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
The French political philosopher Raymond Aron once observed that the twentieth century "could have been Germany's century." In 1900, the country was Europe's preeminent power, its material strength and strident militaristic ethos apparently balanced by a vital culture and extraordinary scientific achievement. It was poised to achieve greatness. In Einstein's German World, the eminent historian Fritz Stern explores the ambiguous promise of Germany before Hitler, as well as its horrifying decline into moral nihilism under Nazi rule, and aspects of its remarkable recovery since World War II. He does so by gracefully blending history and biography in a sequence of finely drawn studies of Germany's great scientists and of German-Jewish relations before and during Hitler's regime. Stern's central chapter traces the complex friendship of Albert Einstein and the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Fritz Haber, contrasting their responses to German life and to their Jewish heritage. Haber, a convert to Christianity and a firm German patriot until the rise of the Nazis; Einstein, a committed internationalist and pacifist, and a proud though secular Jew. Other chapters, also based on new archival sources, consider the turbulent and interrelated careers of the physicist Max Planck, an austere and powerful figure who helped to make Berlin a happy, productive place for Einstein and other legendary scientists; of Paul Ehrlich, the founder of chemotherapy; of Walther Rathenau, the German-Jewish industrialist and statesman tragically assassinated in 1922; and of Chaim Weizmann, chemist, Zionist, and first president of Israel, whose close relations with his German colleagues is here for the first time recounted. Stern examines the still controversial way that historians have dealt with World War I and Germans have dealt with their nation's defeat, and he analyzes the conflicts over the interpretations of Germany's past that persist to this day. He also writes movingly about the psychic cost of Germany's reunification in 1990, the reconciliation between Germany and Poland, and the challenges and prospects facing Germany today. At once historical and personal, provocative and accessible, Einstein's German World illuminates the issues that made Germany's and Europe's past and present so important in a tumultuous century of creativity and violence.

The German-Speaking World

The German-Speaking World PDF Author: Patrick Stevenson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134792859
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
This accessible textbook offers students the opportunity to explore for themselves a wide range of sociolinguistic issues relating to the German language and its role in societies around the world. It is written for undergraduate students who have a sound practical knowledge of German but who have little or no knowledge of linguistics or sociolinguistics. It combines text with practical exercises and discussion questions to stimulate readers to think for themselves and to tackle specific problems. In Part One Patrick Stevenson invites readers to investigate and reflect on issues about the status and function of the German language in relation to its speakers and to speakers of other languages with which it comes into contact. In Part Two the focus shifts to the forms and functions of individual features of the language. This involves, for example, identifying features of regional speech forms, analysing similarities and differences between written and spoken German, or looking at the 'social meaning' underlying different forms of address. Part Three explores the relationship between the German language and the nature of 'Germanness'. It concentrates on people's attitudes towards the language, the ways in which it is changing, and their views on what it represents for them.

English in the German-speaking World

English in the German-speaking World PDF Author: Raymond Hickey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108488099
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
A collection of studies on the role of English in German-speaking countries, covering a broad range of topics.

The World of Children

The World of Children PDF Author: Simone Lässig
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789202795
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
In an era of rapidly increasing technological advances and international exchange, how did young people come to understand the world beyond their doorsteps? Focusing on Germany through the lens of the history of knowledge, this collection explores various media for children—from textbooks, adventure stories, and other literature to board games, museums, and cultural events—to probe what they aimed to teach young people about different cultures and world regions. These multifaceted contributions from specialists in historical, literary, and cultural studies delve into the ways that children absorbed, combined, and adapted notions of the world.

The German Problem Reconsidered:Germany and the World Order 1870 to the Present

The German Problem Reconsidered:Germany and the World Order 1870 to the Present PDF Author: David Calleo
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521223096
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
In this provocative book, David Calleo surveys German history - not to present new material but to look afresh at the old. He argues that recent explanations for Germany's external conflicts have focused on flaws in the country's traditional political institutions and culture. These German-centred explanations are convenient Calloe notes, for they tend to exonerate others from their responsibilities in bringing about two world wars, namely the American and Russian hegemonies in Europe. As a result of this approach the big questions in German history are still answered with the ageing clichés of a generation ago despite the proliferation of German historical studies. Throughout Professor Calleo examines with some scepticism the concept of Germany's uniqueness and its consequences. In effect, his study stresses the continuing relevance of traditional issues among the Western states. This book, he asserts, should be regarded as a modest dissent from the prevailing view that history either began or ended in 1945.

Literature and Religion in the German-Speaking World

Literature and Religion in the German-Speaking World PDF Author: Ian Cooper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108418102
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
The relationship between literature and religion in German is unique in the European tradition. It is essential to the definition of German, Austrian and Swiss cultural identity in both the Protestant and Catholic traditions, and is crucial to our understanding of what has been called the 'special path' of German intellectual life. Offering in-depth essays by leading scholars, Literature and Religion in the German-Speaking World analyses this relationship from the beginnings of vernacular literature in German, via the Reformation, early-modern and Enlightenment periods, to the present day. It shows how such fundamental concepts as 'subjectivity', 'identity' and 'modernity' itself arise from the interrelation between religious and secular modes of understanding, and how this interrelation is inseparable from its expression in literature.

Views of Violence

Views of Violence PDF Author: Jörg Echternkamp
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1789201276
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Twenty-first-century views of historical violence have been immeasurably influenced by cultural representations of the Second World War. Within Europe, one of the key sites for such representation has been the vast array of museums and memorials that reflect contemporary ideas of war, the roles of soldiers and civilians, and the self-perception of those who remember. This volume takes a historical perspective on museums covering the Second World War and explores how these institutions came to define political contexts and cultures of public memory in Germany, across Europe, and throughout the world.

Translating the World

Translating the World PDF Author: Birgit Tautz
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271080515
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
In Translating the World, Birgit Tautz provides a new narrative of German literary history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Departing from dominant modes of thought regarding the nexus of literary and national imagination, she examines this intersection through the lens of Germany’s emerging global networks and how they were rendered in two very different German cities: Hamburg and Weimar. German literary history has tended to employ a conceptual framework that emphasizes the nation or idealized citizenry, yet the experiences of readers in eighteenth-century German cities existed within the context of their local environments, in which daily life occurred and writers such as Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe worked. Hamburg, a flourishing literary city in the late eighteenth century, was eventually relegated to the margins of German historiography, while Weimar, then a small town with an insular worldview, would become mythologized for not only its literary history but its centrality in national German culture. By interrogating the histories of and texts associated with these cities, Tautz shows how literary styles and genres are born of local, rather than national, interaction with the world. Her examination of how texts intersect and interact reveals how they shape and transform the urban cultural landscape as they are translated and move throughout the world. A fresh, elegant exploration of literary translation, discursive shifts, and global cultural changes, Translating the World is an exciting new story of eighteenth-century German culture and its relationship to expanding global networks that will especially interest scholars of comparative literature, German studies, and literary history.

From Old Regime to Industrial State

From Old Regime to Industrial State PDF Author: Richard H. Tilly
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022672557X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
In From Old Regime to Industrial State, Richard H. Tilly and Michael Kopsidis question established thinking about Germany’s industrialization. While some hold that Germany experienced a sudden breakthrough to industrialization, the authors instead consider a long view, incorporating market demand, agricultural advances, and regional variations in industrial innovativeness, customs, and governance. They begin their assessment earlier than previous studies to show how the 18th-century emergence of international trade and the accumulation of capital by merchants fed commercial expansion and innovation. This book provides the history behind the modern German economic juggernaut.