Fear in the German-Speaking World, 1600-2000 (History of Emotions)

"This book addresses the nature and role of fear in the German world from the early modern period through to the 20th century. Offering the first collection that centres fear in the historical analysis of central Europe since 1600, these essays demonstrate the importance of emotional experience to the study of the past. Fear has been at the centre of many of the most important historical events in this region; witch hunts, religious conflicts, invasions and ultra-nationalism in the form of the Nazi regime. This book explores ways in which fear was understood, developed and negotiated throughout these historical contexts, and how people of the German world coped with it. From the fear of vampires to the loss of national sovereignty, pestilence, gypsies and criminals, Fear in the German Speaking World 1600-2000 draws connections between cases over a period of 400 years and considers fear alongside the history of emotions more generally. In doing so, the chapters reveal a complex, evolving construction of fear that is universally human, but also dependent upon its cultural and historical context."-- Provided by publisher "This book considers problems of cultural identity and power in the context of the competing imperialisms of the early 4th century BC through a reading of Xenophon's works of narrative history, the Hellenica , Anabasis and Cyropaedia . These texts deal with highly contentious subject matter: the representation of conflicts between Greek states, conflicts between Greeks and non-Greeks, especially Persia, and relations between the elite individual and society. In all three texts, politically significant moments are imagined in highly visual terms. We are shown spectacles of Spartan military victory, vistas of Asian landscape or displays of Persian imperial pomp, and historical protagonists are presented as spectators viewing and responding to events. Through this visual form of narration, which is also used, with slightly different emphasis, by Xenophon's historiographical predecessors Herodotus and Thucydides, the reader is encouraged imaginatively to place themself in the position of the historical protagonists. Through being allowed to view events from different perspectives, and therefore to occupy multiple, often conflicting political positions in close sequence or even simultaneously, the reader not only experiences the problems faced by historical actors, but becomes engaged in the political conflicts acted out in the narratives. The depiction of spectacles and spectators draws the reader into an active participation in the ideological contradictions of their time, in a period when Panhellenic aspiration co-existed with hegemonic competition between Greek states, and when Greeks could be both beneficiaries and victims of imperialism. Through offering an often contradictory and conflictual reading experience, Xenophon's Hellenica , Anabasis and Cyropaedia both reveal and enact conflicts within elite Greek political self-consciousness in the late Classical period"-- Provided by publisher This book addresses the nature and role of fear in the German world from the early modern period through to the 20th century. Offering the first collection that centres fear in the historical analysis of Central Europe since 1600, these essays demonstrate the importance of emotional experience to the study of the past. Fear has been at the centre of many of the most important historical events in this region; witch hunts, religious conflicts, invasions and ultra-nationalism in the form of the Nazi regime. This book explores ways in which fear was understood, developed and negotiated throughout these historical contexts, and how people of the German world coped with it. From the fear of vampires to the loss of national sovereignty, pestilence, gypsies and criminals, Fear in the German Speaking World draws connections between cases over a period of 400 years and considers fear alongside the history of emotions more generally. In doing so, the chapters reveal a complex, evolving construction of fear that is likely universally human, but also dependent upon its cultural and historical context. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments 1 Introduction 2 Political Fear during the Wars of Louis XIV: 3 Vampires, Ottomans, and the Specter of Contagion: The Intersectionality of Fear on the Periphery of the Habsburg Monarchy 4 “The Forest is not Everyone’s Friend”: Fear in an Eighteenth-Century Southwest German Hometown* 5 Gypsy Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Germany: A Biopolitical Response 6 Cultivating Fear: The Image of the SA and the Presence of Propaganda in the Late Weimar Öffentlichkeit 7 Conceptualizing Gender and Fear: German-Jewish Masculinities in the Third Reich and the Dread of the Unknown 8 Gangs in the Forest: The Construction of the Criminal Archetype in Post–Second World War Western Germany 9 Fear of Falling: German Discussions of Poverty from 1945 10 German Angst after 1945 as Fear of the Fear 11 Conclusions Contributors Index