European University Institute Library

The Italian Renaissance in the German historical imagination, 1860-1930, Martin A. Ruehl

eng

index present

non fiction

The Italian Renaissance in the German historical imagination, 1860-1930

electronic resource

dictionaries

924638740

Martin A. Ruehl

Ideas in context, 105Cambridge Social Sciences eBooks

This innovative study takes a fresh look at a decisive period in the development of Western historiography; the German engagement with the Italian Renaissance in the decades from the German unification to the Weimar republic. Examining the writings of Nietzsche, Burckhardt and Mann, alongside a wealth of visual sources, Dr Martin Ruehl traces the way in which the perception of the Italian Renaissance in this period is linked to, and to some extent shapes, the changing political discourse of the German middle class at a crucial moment of its modernisation. He argues that this discourse was tied to questions of religion, Kultur and national identity, and determined by rival tropes such as medievalism and the cult of the Reformation. The book ultimately reveals the Renaissance as a site of contestation and a concept fraught with the expectations, hopes and fears that defined the German bourgeoisie's experience of modernity.--, Provided by publisher

Introduction: Quattrocento Florence and what it means to be modern -- "An uncanny re-awakening" : Nietzsche's renascence of the Renaissance out of the spirit of Jacob Burckhardt -- Death in Florence : Thomas Mann and the ideologies of Renaissancismus -- "The first modern man on the throne" : Reich, race, and rule in Ernst Kantorowicz's Frederick the Second -- The Renaissance reclaimed : Burgerhumanismus and the forging of the Baron thesis -- Conclusion: The waning of the Renaissance : Death and after-life of an idea