Jost Hermand – författare

The rich conceptual and experiential relays between music and philosophy - echoes of what Theodor W. Adorno once called Klangfiguren, or ""sound figures"" - resonate with heightened intensity during the period of modernity that extends from early German Idealism to the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. This volume traces the political, historical, and philosophical trajectories of a specifically German tradition in which thinkers take recourse to music, both as an aesthetic practice and as the object of their speculative work. The contributors examine the texts of such highly influential writers and thinkers as Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bloch, Mann, Adorno, and Lukacs in relation to individual composers including Beethoven, Wagner, Schonberg, and Eisler. Their explorations of the complexities that arise in conceptualizing music as a mode of representation and philosophy as a mode of aesthetic practice thematize the ways in which the fields of music and philosophy are altered when either attempts to express itself in terms defined by the other.

Bitter Witness is an intensive, factual study of Otto Dix’s war-related art. It is the first book to place Dix’s etching cycle, Der Krieg, alongside numerous paintings and drawings in the perspective of his war experience on two fronts from mid-1915 to 1918’s finale. It includes a full history of the war, the Weimar Republic’s socio-political upheavals, and the Nazi years, following Dix and his colleagues, including Kaethe Kollwitz, through the artistic movements and events in the first half of Germany’s most turbulent century.

Gathers lyric poems, satire, and essays about the German countryside and literature, by the nineteenth-century romantic poet.

The German Library is a new series of the major works of German literature and thought from medieval times to the present. The volumes have forewords by internationally known writers and introductions by prominent scholars. Here the English-speaking reader can find the broadest possible collection of poetic and intellectual achievements in new as well as great classic translations. Convenient and accessible in format, the volumes of The German Library will form the core of any growing library of European literature for years to come.

Gathers selections from letters, essays, criticism, and autobiographies by Telemann, Handel, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schuman, Liszt, Wagner, Brahms, and Mahler.

Up to the end of the nineteenth century, Germany largely perceived itself as "the nation of poets and philosophers." But with the enormous popularity of Schubert and Wagner, this began to change. Suddenly, composers also began to play a greater role in theories of national identity, and music theory became and important element of German thought. The essays in this volume reflect this, and are by a range of writers: Adorno, Bloch, Thomas Mann, Wachenroder, Herder, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Hegel, Bettina von Arnim, Nietzsche, Max Weber, Brecht, and others.

Foreword by Jost HermandThe libretti of the greatest German operas: Mozart's The Magic Flute, Beethoven's Fidelio, Wagner's Parsifal, Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, and Schoenberg's Moses and Aron.

BETWEEN 1933 AND 1945 MEMBERS OF THREE GROUPS—THE Nazi fascists, Inner Emigration, and Exiles—fought with equal fervor over who could definitively claim to represent the authentically “great German culture,” as it was culture that imparted real value to both the state and the individual. But when authorities made pronouncements about “culture” were they really talking about high art? This book analyzes the highly complex interconnections among the cultural-political concepts of these various ideological groups and asks why the most artistically ambitious art forms were viewed as politically important by all cultured (or even semi-cultured) Germans in the period from 1933 to 1945, with their ownership the object of a bitter struggle between key figures in the Nazi fascist regime, representatives of Inner Emigration, and Germans driven out of the Third Reich.

New essays examining Goethe's relationship to the Jews, and the contribution of Jewish scholars to the fame of the greatest German writer.The success of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners(1997) and the heated debates that followed its publication exposed once again Germany's long tradition of anti-Semitism as a major cause of the Holocaust. Goldhagen, like many before him, drew a direct and irresistible line from Luther's pamphlets against the Jews to Hitler's attempted annihilation of European Jewry. This collection of new essays examines the thesis of a universal anti-Semitism in Germany by focussing on its greatest author, Goethe, and seeing to what extent some scholars are justified in accusing him of anti-Semitism. It places the reception of Goethe's works in a broader historical context: his relationship to Judaism and the Jews; the reception of his works by the Jewish elite in Germany, the reception of the 'Goethe cult' by Jewish scholars; and the Jewish contribution to Goethe scholarship. The last section of the volume treats the Jewish contribution to Goethe's fame and to Goethe philology since the 19th century, and the exodus of many Jewish authors and scholars after 1933, when they took their beloved Goethe into exile. When a few of them returned to Germany after 1945, it was to a country that had lost Goethe's most devoted audience, the German Jews.KLAUS L. BERGHAHN and JOST HERMAND are professors of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

BETWEEN 1933 AND 1945 MEMBERS OF THREE GROUPS—THE Nazi fascists, Inner Emigration, and Exiles—fought with equal fervor over who could definitively claim to represent the authentically “great German culture,” as it was culture that imparted real value to both the state and the individual. But when authorities made pronouncements about “culture” were they really talking about high art? This book analyzes the highly complex interconnections among the cultural-political concepts of these various ideological groups and asks why the most artistically ambitious art forms were viewed as politically important by all cultured (or even semi-cultured) Germans in the period from 1933 to 1945, with their ownership the object of a bitter struggle between key figures in the Nazi fascist regime, representatives of Inner Emigration, and Germans driven out of the Third Reich.

«This volume epitomizes Jost Hermand’s inimitable talent of synthesizing wide-ranging disciplines in an accessible and compelling style, bringing to life the experiences of musicians and their public in the context of their own times. These essays also give us a glimpse into how his own life experiences created the hunger for culture that defined his long and illustrious career.» (Pamela M. Potter, Professor of German and Musicology, University of Wisconsin—Madison)　«Jost Hermand’s final book is an enormously rich gift to posterity. The fifteen essays on musical culture that constitute this collection contain brief but illuminating glimpses of the whole glorious parade of serious music and those who composed, cultivated, and commented on it in the German lands, from Buxtehude to Stockhausen and beyond. His insight and well-observed contextualization reveals a lifetime of scholarship and experience.» (Celia Applegate, Professor of History, Vanderbilt University)　In contrast to the writings of many other musicologists, this book is not primarily concerned with the biographies of certain composers or a structural analysis of their major compositions, but rather with the stands they took in the ideological struggles during their lifetimes and how these affected some of their most important works. Beginning with the late seventeenth century, special emphasis is thereby given to Pietism, orthodox Lutheranism, the impact of the French Revolution, the restrictive measures of the Metternich period, the Wilhelminian era, Expressionism, the New Objectivity and the materialist aesthetics of the Weimar Republic, fascism, exile and the modernism of the early Federal Republic of Germany.

Hermann Broch wrote two of the most significant novels of German modernism, The Sleepwalkers and The Death of Virgil, which established his importance to German literature. His writings on democracy, mass delusion and internationalism are more obscure. Embracing Democracy examines the central political, social and psychological tenets of Broch’s concept of «total democracy» as an expression of the synthesis of his European intellectual development – his Viennese Bildung – and his new position as an exile from fascism.This book chronicles Broch’s experiences from the founding of the Austrian First Republic to his exile in the United States (1918 to 1951). The author traces two seemingly contradictory narratives in Broch’s political consciousness. On the one hand, Broch held an intellectual position in his post-exile political theory that was consistent with the philosophy of history, psychology and epistemology of his Viennese milieu. On the other hand, he significantly reconceived the utility of politics for his theory of value construction, while also becoming more involved in political activism. This book provides new perspectives on the work of Hermann Broch beyond his literary œuvre and offers insights into the development of political theory among exiled European intellectuals in the United States.

In February 1943 intermarried Germans gathered in Berlin’s Rosenstrasse to protest the feared deportation of their Jewish spouses. This book examines the competing representations of the Rosenstrasse protest in contemporary Germany, demonstrating how cultural memories of this event are intertwined with each other and with concepts of identity. It analyses these shifting patterns of memory and what they reveal about the dynamics of the past–present relationship from the earliest post-unification period up to the present day. Interdisciplinary in its approach, the book provides insights into the historical debate surrounding the protest, accounts in popular history and biography, an analysis of von Trotta’s 2003 film Rosenstraße, and an exploration of the multiple memorials to this historical event.The study reveals that the protest’s remembrance is fraught with competing desires: to have a less encumbered engagement with this past and to retain a critical memory of the events that allows for a recognition of both heroism and accountability. It concludes that we are on the cusp of witnessing a new shift in remembering that reflects contemporary socio-political tensions with the resurgence of the far right, noting how this is already becoming visible in existing representations of the Rosenstrasse protest.

This book offers a thorough examination of the novels of Irmtraud Morgner (1933-1990), one of the most talented, compelling and overlooked writers within East German feminist and avant-garde circles. Using a combination of theoretical approaches – including Adorno’s aesthetic theories and Bakhtinian analyses of dialogism and the carnivalesque – the author traces Morgner’s engagement with postmodernist aesthetic strategies back to her efforts, beginning in the early 1970s, to pose questions about effective political practices. Morgner’s work sheds new light on the fraught relationship between GDR intellectuals and the state, a hotly debated topic that marks most recent attempts to understand literary culture in the German Democratic Republic. Situating Morgner’s fiction at the intersection of postmodern and feminist theory, this study also offers new evidence for viewing literature from the GDR as significantly more complex and aesthetically interesting than has been previously assumed.

Goethes Rezeption in Deutschland war anfangs höchst kontrovers und wandelte sich erst im Laufe der Zeit zu einer Verkultung des Dichters. Das Buch geht mit einer dialektisierenden Optik an Goethe heran. Anhand der beiden Kategorien «Pro» und «Contra» werden Werk und Wirkung Goethes aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln betrachtet und in den geistesgeschichtlichen Kontext eingereiht.

Focusing on the ideological contradictions inherent in the German alliance with Japan during World War II, this book analyses German discourse about Japan from the distinct yet intricately connected standpoints of the German-Japanese historical relationship, the scientific and pseudo-scientific presentation of Japan in Germany, and German fictional depictions of Japan.The volume examines the historical relationship between Germany and Japan in the light of their alliance. It also traces the origins and development of the image of Japan in Nazi Germany. Through non-fiction texts, the points of emphasis, friction, and outright contradiction are discovered between Nazi ideology and an alliance with Japan as they were discussed both publicly and privately in Germany at the time. Finally, by examining fictional depictions of Japan and the Japanese under the Nazis, the work reveals the means by which fiction addressed these ideological issues and incorporated the historical and non-fictional arguments of its contemporaries. This book looks carefully at its connection to other historical, political, racial, and ideological thought of the time.

This book traces the development of the monist world-view in Germany from the Age of Goethe to the 1920s. Originally a core idea in the philosophy of Spinoza, monism, the idea of a universe of one substance that is both mind and matter, inspired many German thinkers from Goethe to Fechner, especially the infamous social Darwinist Ernst Haeckel. This study contrasts Haeckel’s monism with the more benign monist world-views of his predecessors and of his socialist and left-liberal contemporaries and followers, above all Bruno Wille and Wilhelm Bölsche.

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Impressionismus" verfügbar.

Jost Hermand stellt politisch intendierte Werke, die in der Zeit von 1806 bis heute entstanden sind, vor und bindet sie in den politisch-historischen Kontext ein. Themen sind zudem die Entstehungszeit des Bildes sowie Herkunft und Bedeutung des Künstlers. Behandelt werden Werke von: Friedrich, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Menzel, Böcklin, Schmidt-Rottluff, Barlach, Kollwitz, Heartfield, Picasso, Nagel, Prechtl, Mattheuer, Kiefer und Rauch. Alles kann zum Denkbild werden und eine Fülle nachwirkender Reflektionen in Gang setzen. Politische Denkbilder greifen stets ein zeitgeschichtliches Ereignis auf, dem sie in Form bildnerischer Verknappung einen in die jeweils anstehenden Konflikte »eingreifenden« Charakter zu geben versuchen. Vor allem die höchst widersprüchlich ablaufende deutsche Geschichte vom Ende des Heiligen Römischen Reichs im Jahr 1806 bis zur so genannten Wende von 1989 ist voller solcher Denkbilder, an denen sich die affirmative, progressive oder gar revolutionäre Gesinnung bestimmter Künstler ablesen lässt. Von den christgermanischen Denkbildern Caspar David Friedrichs, den Fridericiana Adolf Menzels, den gründerzeitlichen Allegorien, den manifestartigen Werken der Expressionisten, den linken Protesten einer Käthe Kollwitz, den heroisierenden Darstellungen des Dritten Reichs bis hin zu den politischen Denkbildern der DDR, der westdeutschen Achtundsechziger sowie einiger Nachwendekünstler entsteht hier eine eindrucksvolle Galerie politisch intendierter Werke.

Als jahrzehntelanger Grenzgänger zwischen Ost und West hat sich Jost Hermand weder der amerikanischen noch der sowjetischen Ideologie des Kalten Kriegs verpflichtet gefühlt. Er wurde aus der DDR ausgewiesen und fand in der BRD nirgends eine Anstellung. So lebt er seit 1958 als Kulturhistoriker in den USA, ohne dabei die Kontakte zu den beiden deutschen Staaten und dann zur Berliner Republik je aufgegeben zu haben. In diesem Buch versammelt er auf der Grundlage seiner Notizen, Briefe und Tagebücher eine Erinnerungsfolge politbiographischer Gespräche, Eindrücke und Begegnungen von den letzten Jahren des Dritten Reichs bis zur unmittelbaren Gegenwart. Diese zeichnen sich durch ihren kritischen Blick wie authentische Zugangsweise aus. Es geht dabei unter anderem um Begegnungen und Gespräche mit: Adolf Hitler, Heiner Müller, Christa Wolf, Hans Mayer, George Mosse, Jürgen Habermas, Alphons Silbermann, Johannes Rau, Hermann Glaser, Richard Hamann, Ludwig Justi, Walter Ulbricht, Jacques Derrida, Walter Grab, Felix Pollak, Susan Sontag, Bill Bradley, Werner Mittenzwei, Ilja Fradkin, Wolfgang Schäuble, Benno von Wiese, Kurt Biedenkopf, Klaus Staeck, Werner Hofmann, Theodor W. Adorno, Rudolf Kolisch, Wolf Biermann, Petra Kelly, Siegfried Unseld und Gottfried Benn.

Gesellschaftspolitisch engagierte Professoren werden heutzutage – im Gefolge der fortschreitenden Ökonomisierung und zugleich Subjektivierung vieler Lebensbereiche – gern als unzeitgemäße Idealisten, hoffnungslose Utopisten oder gar lächerliche Moralathleten abgetan. Im Gegensatz zu derartigen Anschauungen stellt dieses Buch elf Geisteswissenschaftler vor, die im ideologisch verhärteten Klima des Kalten Kriegs zwischen Ost und West versucht hatten, gegen die systemkonformen Fronten in der BRD und der DDR aufzubegehren. Mögen auch manche ihrer Verlautbarungen veraltet erscheinen, ihre in die politischen Konflikte eingreifenden Haltungen sind bis heute vorbildlich. Es handelt sich dabei um: Richard Hamann, Werner Krauss, Jürgen Kuczynski, Wolfgang Abendroth, Georg Knepler, Hans Mayer, Helmut Gollwitzer, Robert Jungk, Walter Grab, Hans Heinz Holz und Werner Mittenzwei.

Wenn von Goethe als dem bedeutendsten "Klassiker" der deutschen Literatur gesprochen wird, so sind damit vor allem sein "Faust", seine "Iphigenie", sein "Wilhelm Meister", seine autobiographischen Schriften sowie seine Gedichte und Balladen gemeint. Da er jedoch die Hälfte seines Lebens mit bildkünstlerischen und naturwissenschaftlichen Studien verbrachte, bei denen es ihm vornehmlich um ein holistisches Verständnis der in all ihren Erscheinungsformen zu respektierenden Natur ging, wäre es fast noch angebrachter, ihn als einen der ersten ökologiebewussten "Klassiker" innerhalb der deutschen Geistesgeschichte zu würdigen, der auf diesem Gebiet – angesichts der uns bedrohenden Gefahren – bis heute relevant geblieben ist. Dafür versucht sich dieses Buch – anhand des im Laufe seines langen Lebens immer vertiefteren Naturverständnisses – mit aller Entschiedenheit einzusetzen, statt Goethe lediglich als einen dilettantischen Empiriker zu charakterisieren. Nach einer Darstellung der lebensgeschichtlichen Etappen von Goethes Bemühungen um ein immer vertiefteres Verständnis der Natur bildet daher den Abschluss des Ganzen eine ausführliche Rezeptionsgeschichte all jener Naturwissenschaftler und Philosophen, die vom frühen 19. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart in Goethe einen "grünen Klassiker" gesehen haben.

In diesem Buch wird erstmals versucht, die Gesamtentwicklung der deutschen Kultur von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart im Hinblick auf ihre sozialbedingten Voraussetzungen darzustellen. Als die wichtigsten Trägerschichten erwiesen sich dabei bis zum 15. Jahrhundert die Kaiser, Bischöfe, Mönche und Ritter, während sich im Zuge der danach einsetzenden Verstädterung eine zunehmende Verbürgerlichung vieler kultureller Bemühungen bemerkbar machte, die jedoch im Zeitalter des Absolutismus wieder zurückgedrängt wurden und erst im späten 18. Jahrhundert ihren entscheidenden Durchbruch erfuhren, ja sich in der Folgezeit mit wechselnden Zielsetzungen als die alleinbestimmenden durchsetzten. Der Hauptakzent wird dabei stets auf die gesellschaftlichen Gegensätze zwischen den jeweils dominierenden Wenigen und die von ihnen unterdrückten bzw. ideologisch manipulierten Vielen gelegt, welche in den verschiedenen Epochen höchst unterschiedliche Formen angenommen haben.

Wenn man von einem erweiterten Kulturbegriff ausgeht, der auch die sozioökonomischen und ideologischen Voraussetzungen ästhetischer Ausdrucksformen mitbedenkt, sind alle Kunstwerke letztlich politisch. Und zwar gilt das selbst für jene wortlose Musik, die in vielen rationalistischen, romantischen und formalistischen Theoriebildungen, ob nun unter negativer oder positiver Perspektive, wegen ihres nichtmimetischen Charakters vornehmlich als „tönende Luft“ interpretiert worden ist. Wie untrennbar jedoch nicht nur Lieder und Opern, sondern auch Werke der Instrumentalmusik mit dem jeweils herrschenden Zeitgeist verbunden waren, soll in diesem Buch anhand ausgewählter Beispiele nachgewiesen werden.