Performance Anxiety

Michael Hau is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.

‘Hau has written an extremely astute, well-researched study about the use of sport to promote performance enhancement in Germany from 1890 to 1945…. Highly recommended.’- S.A. Riess (Choice Magazine vol 55:02:2017) "[Performance Anxiety’s] thoughtful analysis of various discourses surrounding performance bears both broad and very specific conclusions that many scholars will find valuable."- David Imhoof, Susquehana University (European History Quarterly, Vol. 48 no 4, 2018) "Sophisticated, original, and richly detailed, Hau’s work sheds new light on the histories of sports, performance, health, state coercion, gender, and modernity in Germany."- Lisa Fetheringill Zwicker, Indiana University, South Bend (Journal of Modern History, March '19) "This monograph examines the relation between sports and work as well as their meaning and exploitation in the German Empire in an impressive way…very successful and readable."- Marcus Coesfeld, Archäologisches Freilichtmuseum Oerlinghausen (Journal of Social History, Summer 2019) "Performance Anxiety will be of particular benefit to those interested in the histories of German business, labor, and the wartime economy, as well as those interested in the history of sport and of biopolitical regimes more generally."- Erik Jensen, Miami University (Monatshefte, vol 110 no 4, 2018)

• IllustrationsAbbreviationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction1 Wehrkraft and Volkskraft: The "Human Economy" and Performance Enhancement during the Empire2 Conditioning Bodies and Minds during the Weimar Republic3: Conditioning People’s Comrades4 The Olympics of Labor: The Reich Vocational Competitions, 1934-19395 The Performance Community at WarConclusionNotesBibliography Index