The German Genius: Europe's Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution and the Twentieth Century - Rilegato

Watson, Peter

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0743285530 ISBN 13: 9780743285537

Casa editrice: Simon & Schuster, 2010

Riassunto

From the end of the Baroque age and the death of Bach in 1750 to the rise of Hitler in 1933, Germany was transformed from a poor relation among western nations into a dominant intellectual and cultural force more influential than France, Britain, Italy, Holland, and the United States. In the early decades of the 20th century, German artists, writers, philosophers, scientists, and engineers were leading their freshly-unified country to new and undreamed of heights, and by 1933, they had won more Nobel prizes than anyone else and more than the British and Americans combined. But this genius was cut down in its prime with the rise and subsequent fall of Adolf Hitler and his fascist Third Reich-a legacy of evil that has overshadowed the nation's contributions ever since. Yet how did the Germans achieve their pre-eminence beginning in the mid-18th century? In this fascinating cultural history, Peter Watson goes back through time to explore the origins of the German genius, how it flourished and shaped our lives, and, most importantly, to reveal how it continues to shape our world. As he convincingly demonstarates, while we may hold other European cultures in higher esteem, it was German thinking-from Bach to Nietzsche to Freud-that actually shaped modern America and Britain in ways that resonate today.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Peter Watson was born in 1943 and was educated at universities in Durham, London and Rome. He has been on the staff of the Sunday Times and The Times, and has written for many other newspapers. He is the author of over a dozen books including Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud. He lives in London.

Dalla seconda/terza di copertina:

'Our intellectual skyline has been altered by German thinkers even more radically than has our physical skyline by German architects'
'The Germans dive deeper - but they come up muddier'
'For those [Germans] born during and after the Second World War the cultural history of Germany before 1933 is that of a lost country, one that they never knew'
'The Nazis are un-German'
'People in England want something to read, the French something to taste, the Germans something to think about'
'The planet is in flames . . . Only from the Germans can come the world-historical reflection, provided that they find and preserve their German element'
'In several respects, American intellectual life is today closer to the German than the British'
'German problems are rarely German problems alone'
'But under what suspicion one comes, if one says, the Germans are now a completely normal people, a regular society'
'Don't you guys know you are in Hollywood? Speak German'
'America may speak English, but it thinks German'
*
Six pages of quotes such as these lead Peter Watson's magisterial sweep through modern German thought and culture, confounding stereotypes that the world has of Germany, and Germany has of itself.

From the end of the Baroque age and the death of Bach to the rise of Hitler in 1933, Germany was transformed from being a poor relation among Western nations into the dominant intellectual and cultural force - more creative and influential than France, Britain, Italy, Holland and the United States. In the early decades of the twentieth century, German artists, writers, scholars, philosophers, scientists and engineers were leading their freshly-unified country to new and undreamed of heights and, by 1933, they had won more Nobel Prizes than anyone else and more than the British and Americans put together.
Yet this remarkable genius was cut down in its prime by Adolf Hitler and his disastrous Third Reich - a brutal legacy that has overshadowed the nation's achievements ever since.
How did the Germans transform their country so as to achieve such pre-eminence? In this absorbing cultural and intellectual history, Peter Watson goes back through time to explore the origins of the German genius, and explains how and why it flourished, how it shaped our lives and, most importantly, how it continues to influence our world. As he convincingly demonstrates, it was German thinking - from Beethoven and Kant to Diesel and Nietzsche, from Goethe and Wagner to Mendel and Planck, from Hegel and Marx to Freud and Schonberg - that did more than anything else to create the modern West. Moreover, despite World War Two, figures like Josef Beuys, Jurgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger ensure that the German genius still resonates intellectually today.
£25

Peter Watson has written for the London Sunday Times, the London Times, the New York Times, the Observer and the Spectator. He is the author of several books of cultural and intellectual history, most recently Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud. From 1997 to 2007 he was a Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in the University of Cambridge. He lives in London.
Photo Credit: Bert Hulsemans

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Simon & Schuster
• Data di pubblicazione: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0743285530
• ISBN 13: 9780743285537
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 992