German Freedom And The Greek Ideal: The Cultural Legacy From Goethe To Mann (palgrave Studies In Cultural And Intellectual History)

This Book Traces This German Idea Of Freedom From The Late Enlightenment Through The Early Twentieth Century. Mcgrath Shows How German Intellectual And Artists Invoked The Ancient Greeks In Order To Inspire Germans To Cultural Renewal And To Enrich Their Understanding Of Freedom As Something Deeper And More Urgent That Political Life Could Offer. By William J. Mcgrath ; Edited By Celia Applegate, Stephanie Frontz, Suzanne Marchand. This book traces this German idea of freedom from the late Enlightenment through the early twentieth century. McGrath shows how German intellectual and artists invoked the ancient Greeks in order to inspire Germans to cultural renewal and to enrich their understanding of freedom as something deeper and more urgent that political life could offer. In 1794, Friedrich Schiller declared that "beauty is the only possible expression of freedom in phenomena." German Freedom and the Greek Ideal traces this German idea of freedom from the late Enlightenment through the early twentieth century. It focuses on the stars of German intellectual and artistic life in the nineteenth century, with illuminating accounts of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gottfried Semper, Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Thomas Mann. Delving deeply into their works, McGrath shows how they invoked the ancient Greeks to in order to inspire Germans to cultural renewal and to enrich their understanding of freedom as something deeper and more urgent than political life could offer Front Matter....Pages i-xxxv Introduction....Pages 1-11 Freedom and Authority: Goethe’s Faust and the Greek War of Independence....Pages 13-41 Freedom in Architecture: Gottfried Semper and the Greek Ideal....Pages 43-74 From Political Freedom to Self-Denial: Wagner’s Ring and the Revolutions of 1848....Pages 75-130 Nietzsche and the Freedom of Self-Overcoming....Pages 131-164 From Self-Denial to Political Freedom: The Odyssey of Thomas Mann....Pages 165-195 Back Matter....Pages 197-236