Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Germany's bourgeois elites became enthralled by the civilization of Renaissance Italy. As their own country entered a phase of critical socioeconomic changes, German historians and writers reinvented the Italian Renaissance as the onset of a heroic modernity: a glorious dawn that ushered in an age of secular individualism, imbued with ruthless vitality and a neo-pagan zest for beauty. The Italian Renaissance in the German Historical Imagination is the first comprehensive account of the debates that shaped the German idea of the Renaissance in the seven decades following Jacob Burckhardt's seminal study of 1860. Based on a wealth of archival material and enhanced by more than one hundred illustrations, it provides a new perspective on the historical thought of Imperial and Weimar Germany, and the formation of a concept that is still with us today.
| ISBN: | 9781108468152 |
| Publication date: | 30th August 2018 |
| Author: | Martin A University of Cambridge Ruehl |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 342 pages |
| Series: | Ideas in Context |
| Genres: |
History of ideas Social and cultural history European history |