Politics and culture in twentieth-century Germany /

Scholars at universities in the UK wrote 11 of the 12 essays in this collection. They wrestle with an issue that has bedeviled intellectuals in the German-speaking lands for centuries: the relationship between culture and state, between Geist and Macht. The authors do not concentrate on the obvious historical moments: the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic, two instances where the state dominated art and bent it to its will. The ideas of a totalitarian state and an artistic commitment serving that goal were first spoken in less repressive times, and some of these essays examine the relationship between politics and culture in the 19th century and even after reunification in 1990. It was that postmodernist spirit that created Die Literaturstreit after 1990 and brought fresh air into the debate on the painful past of many German intellectuals. These essays are lively discussions of a uniquely German problem. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Graduate and research collections. S. Gittleman Tufts University