The Italian Renaissance in the German Historical Imagination, 1860–1930

Explores German engagement with the Italian Renaissance in the decades from German unification to the Weimar republic.

Martin A. Ruehl (Author)

9781107036994, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 October 2015

341 pages, 73 b/w illus.
23.6 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.67 kg

'The legacy of the late Georg G. Iggers graces The Italian Renaissance in the German Historical Imagination, 1860–1930, Martin A. Ruehl's elegant exploration of the German idea of the Renaissance from Jacob Burckhardt to Hans Baron. … The book's lavish illustrations supplement the literary, textual approach with an evocative glimpse at neo-Renaissance art and architecture.' Tuska Benes, The American Historical Review

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Germany's bourgeois elites became enthralled by the civilization of Renaissance Italy. As their own country entered a phase of critical socioeconomic changes, German historians and writers reinvented the Italian Renaissance as the onset of a heroic modernity: a glorious dawn that ushered in an age of secular individualism, imbued with ruthless vitality and a neo-pagan zest for beauty. The Italian Renaissance in the German Historical Imagination is the first comprehensive account of the debates that shaped the German idea of the Renaissance in the seven decades following Jacob Burckhardt's seminal study of 1860. Based on a wealth of archival material and enhanced by more than one hundred illustrations, it provides a new perspective on the historical thought of Imperial and Weimar Germany, and the formation of a concept that is still with us today.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Quattrocento Florence and what it means to be modern
2. Ruthless Renaissance: Burckhardt, Nietzsche and the violent birth of the modern self
3. Death in Florence: Thomas Mann and the ideologies of Renaissancismus
4. 'The first modern man on the throne': Reich, race and rule in Ernst Kantorowicz's Frederick the Second
5. The Renaissance reclaimed: Hans Baron's case for Bürgerhumanismus
6. Conclusion: the waning of the Renaissance - death and afterlife of an idea
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH]