Karin A. Wurst - Böcker

Entertainment, defined as occasions for creating pleasure, added an important dimension to the lifestyle and self-definition of the German middle class around the turn of the nineteenth century. Modern forms of culture and consumption appearing around this time not only enhanced pleasure in physical sensations but also enabled imaginary sensations in the absence of actual stimuli. Desiring, rather than having, became an important mode of cultural consumption, linking products and practices with self-image, serving to express social identity in an increasingly more anonymous society - a society where the modern freedom of choice brought with it a loss of tradition and the stability attached to it. Fabricating Pleasure traces the creation of this unique form of domestic culture, showing how the bourgeoisie of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Germany fused consumption with high culture. Author Karin Wurst illuminates the sociohistorical context and the emergence of the modern middle class, its differentiation, and its conception of culture. In her thoughtful analysis, Wurst reconstructs the roles of Empfindsamkeit (sensibility) and the new love paradigm, examining the change in mentality they fostered through the reconceptualization of pleasure and entertainment. The book also discusses the relationship between print culture (using Bertuch's Journal des Luxus und der Moden as its prime example) and an increase in social mobility. From art and music to fashion and travel, Wurst places these popular forms of entertainment and pleasurable diversion in their social and historical contexts and also shows how they have remarkable bearing on present-day debates on cultural literacy.

When the knight Adelbert leaves his beloved Adelheit for the Crusades, her father arranges for her to marry the rich and powerful Robert von Rastenberg, whom she does not love. Several years later, while strolling through the forest, Adelheit encounters her former lover, who has returned to persuade her to run off with him. Torn between her love for Adelbert and her honor and duty as wife, Adelheit chooses to remain with Robert, but her manipulative stepson, Franz, hungry for his father's love and his inheritance, conspires to trick Adelheit into fleeing—and precipitates a series of events that end in tragedy.Published in 1788 and purporting to chronicle historical events, Eleonore Thon's play reveals more about the changing roles of women at the dawn of the Industrial Age than it does about knightly conduct in the German Middle Ages. Adelheit von Rastenberg will be of interest to students of German literature, comparative literature, women's studies, and theater.