Weimar Intellectuals and the Threat of Modernity

Weimar Intellectuals and the Threat of Modernity PDF Author: Dagmar Barnouw
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253364272
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
" . . . the range, power, and archival resourcefulness of Barnouw's book will make it impossible for anyone working in the field to ignore this powerful and disturbing historical meditation on the societal function and responsibility of the intellecutual." —The German Quarterly " . . . a work of real value for patient readers." —American Journal of Sociology " . . . a forceful and compelling thesis that challenges our understanding of several seminal figures writing during the first half of the century." —Monatshefte In this challenging study of a complex period, Barnouw investigates the works of seven representative figures of the Weimar republic: Walter Rahtenau, Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Jünger, Hermann Broch, and Alfred Döblin.

Weimar Intellectuals and the Threat of Modernity

Weimar Intellectuals and the Threat of Modernity PDF Author: Dagmar Barnouw
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253364272
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book Here

Book Description
" . . . the range, power, and archival resourcefulness of Barnouw's book will make it impossible for anyone working in the field to ignore this powerful and disturbing historical meditation on the societal function and responsibility of the intellecutual." —The German Quarterly " . . . a work of real value for patient readers." —American Journal of Sociology " . . . a forceful and compelling thesis that challenges our understanding of several seminal figures writing during the first half of the century." —Monatshefte In this challenging study of a complex period, Barnouw investigates the works of seven representative figures of the Weimar republic: Walter Rahtenau, Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Jünger, Hermann Broch, and Alfred Döblin.

Weimar Thought

Weimar Thought PDF Author: Peter E. Gordon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691135118
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
A comprehensive look at the intellectual and cultural innovations of the Weimar period During its short lifespan, the Weimar Republic (1918–33) witnessed an unprecedented flowering of achievements in many areas, including psychology, political theory, physics, philosophy, literary and cultural criticism, and the arts. Leading intellectuals, scholars, and critics—such as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Martin Heidegger—emerged during this time to become the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century. Even today, the Weimar era remains a vital resource for new intellectual movements. In this incomparable collection, Weimar Thought presents both the specialist and the general reader a comprehensive guide and unified portrait of the most important innovators, themes, and trends of this fascinating period. The book is divided into four thematic sections: law, politics, and society; philosophy, theology, and science; aesthetics, literature, and film; and general cultural and social themes of the Weimar period. The volume brings together established and emerging scholars from a remarkable array of fields, and each individual essay serves as an overview for a particular discipline while offering distinctive critical engagement with relevant problems and debates. Whether used as an introductory companion or advanced scholarly resource, Weimar Thought provides insight into the rich developments behind the intellectual foundations of modernity.

Women in the Metropolis

Women in the Metropolis PDF Author: Katharina von Ankum
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 052091760X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Bringing together the work of scholars in many disciplines, Women in the Metropolis provides a comprehensive introduction to women's experience of modernism and urbanization in Weimar Germany. It shows women as active participants in artistic, social, and political movements and documents the wide range of their responses to the multifaceted urban culture of Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s. Examining a variety of media ranging from scientific writings to literature and the visual arts, the authors trace gendered discourses as they developed to make sense of and regulate emerging new images of femininity. Besides treating classic films such as Metropolis and Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, the articles discuss other forms of mass culture, including the fashion industry and the revue performances of Josephine Baker. Their emphasis on women's critical involvement in the construction of their own modernity illustrates the significance of the Weimar cultural experience and its relevance to contemporary gender, German, film, and cultural studies.

The Intellectual Appropriation of Technology

The Intellectual Appropriation of Technology PDF Author: Mikael Hard
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262581660
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This book examines the broad range of social and intellectualresponses to technology in the first four decades of this century, andsuggests that these responses set the terms that continue to governcontemporary debates. Starting around 1900, technology became a lively subject for debate among intellectuals, writers, and other opinion leaders. The expansion of the machine into ever more areas of social and economic life had led to a need to interpret its meanings in a more comprehensive way than in the past. World War I and its aftermath shifted the terms of this ongoing debate by underlining both the potential dangers of technology and its centrality to modern life. This book examines the broad range of social and intellectual responses to technology in the first four decades of this century, and suggests that these responses set the terms that continue to govern contemporary debates. Focusing on the broader contexts within which intellectual positions are formed, the book highlights the ways in which attitudes toward technology were shaped in a wide variety of national and organizational settings. A common theme is that, in debating technology, people drew on their distinctive national symbols and cultural traditions. By emphasizing the interplay between debates on technology and the making of modernity, the book challenges standard historical accounts of the early twentieth century. Contributors Ketil G. Andersen, Aant Elzinga, Tor Halvorsen, Mikael Hård, Kjetil Jakobsen, Andrew Jamison, Catharina Landström, Conny Mithander, Sissel Myklebust, Dick van Lente, Peter Wagner

Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin PDF Author: Esther Leslie
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745315683
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Powerful new insights into a key twentieth-century political thinker

The Politics of Difference

The Politics of Difference PDF Author: Edwin Norman Wilmsen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226900162
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
According to most social scientists, the advent of a global media village and the rise of liberal democratic government would diminish ethnic and national identity as a source of political action. Yet the contemporary world is in the midst of an explosion of identity politics and often violent ethnonationalism. This volume examines cases ranging from the well-publicized ethnonationalism of Bosnia and post-Apartheid South Africa to ethnic conflicts in Belgium and Sri Lanka. Distinguished international scholars including John Comaroff, Stanley J. Tambiah, and Ernesto Laclau argue that continued acceptance of imposed ethnic terms as the most appropriate vehicle for collective self-identification and social action legitimizes the conditions of inequality that give rise to them in the first place. This ambitious attempt to explain the inadequacies of current approaches to power and ethnicity forges more realistic alternatives to the volatile realities of social difference.

Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers

Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers PDF Author: William E. McDonald
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 9781571131546
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
A study of Mann's novel tetralogy of the 1930s that stresses its relationship to three key essays by Mann.

A History of Fascism, 1914–1945

A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 PDF Author: Stanley G. Payne
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
ISBN: 0299148734
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 628

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Book Description
“A History of Fascism is an invaluable sourcebook, offering a rare combination of detailed information and thoughtful analysis. It is a masterpiece of comparative history, for the comparisons enhance our understanding of each part of the whole. The term ‘fascist,’ used so freely these days as a pejorative epithet that has nearly lost its meaning, is precisely defined, carefully applied and skillfully explained. The analysis effectively restores the dimension of evil.”—Susan Zuccotti, The Nation “A magisterial, wholly accessible, engaging study. . . . Payne defines fascism as a form of ultranationalism espousing a myth of national rebirth and marked by extreme elitism, mobilization of the masses, exaltation of hierarchy and subordination, oppression of women and an embrace of violence and war as virtues.”—Publishers Weekly

The Inter-War Crisis

The Inter-War Crisis PDF Author: Richard Overy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113485661X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
The Inter-War Crisis is a concise yet analytical overview of the rapidly-changing world between 1918 and 1939, covering the political, economic and social instability that resulted from the First World War and the eventual descent towards the fresh upheaval of the Second World War. Revised throughout and containing a new range of illustrations, this third edition covers topics such as the Russian Revolution, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the concepts of the ‘end of civilization‘ and the decline of the West, cultural and scientific responses to an age of anxiety and fear, and the ways in which dictatorship came to replace democracy across so much of Europe. Global in focus, it offers thematic discussions, close analysis of a range of case studies and a clear over-arching narrative structure that guides the reader from the close of one war to the beginning of the next. Also including a selection of over thirty primary source documents, maps, a chronology of events, a glossary of key terms, a Who’s Who of important figures and an extensive and updated guide to further reading, this book is an essential introduction for students of the inter-war period.

Distinguished Outsider

Distinguished Outsider PDF Author: Christian Rogowski
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9781879751521
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
A study of the shifts of critical opinion on Musil, with special reference to The Man Without Qualities. Austrian writer Robert Musil (1880-1942) ranks with Proust, Joyce, Kafka and Thomas Mann as a master of the modern prose narrative; his works encompass a wide range of theoretical and aesthetic impulses, ranging from Nietzsche toMach, from Gestalt theory to Freudian psychoanalysis. This volume traces the scholarly reception of Musil's works, marked by discontinuities and abrupt shifts of perception. At the beginning of his career, Musil was stereotyped asan author primarily interested in morally questionable 'psychological' issues, before being plunged into near oblivion by his exile, forced by National Socialism. After the Second World War he was 'rediscovered', but the development of Musil studies was severely hampered by the inability to determine an authoritative edition of his unfinished masterpiece, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man without Qualities), 1930-43. Professor Rogowski shows howsuccessive generations of scholars have appropriated Musil for their own ends, constructing a bewildering and often contradictory array of images of the author according to their own ideological and methodological biases, and howthis multitude of different perspectives corresponds with changes in German studies and historical developments over the past four decades. In so doing, he sheds new light on Musil's paradoxical status as, in the words of Frank Kermode, 'the least read of the great twentieth-century novelists'. CHRISTIAN ROGOWSKI is assistant professor of German at Amherst College.