Intellectuals and the Nation: Collective Identity in a German Axial Age

by Bernhard Giesen , Translated by Nicholas Levis , Amos Weisz

• ISBN13: 9780521621618
• ISBN10: 0521621615
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-08-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book proposes a theory of collective and national identity based on culture and language rather than power and politics. Applying this to what he calls Germany's 'axial age', Bernhard Giesen shows how the codes of nineteenth-century German identity in turn became those of the divided Germany between 1945 and 1989. The identity he describes derives from the ideas of German intellectuals, from the uprooted Romantic poets to the influential German mandarins. Carried by the emerging bourgeoisie, it was constructed on the tensions between power and spirit, money and culture, and the sacred and profane.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction: the nation in social science and history	1	(10)
1 The construction of collective identity: proposal for a new analysis	11	(40)
2 Prelude: the encounter with otherness	51	(11)
3 The nation as invisible public: the patriotic code	62	(18)
4 The nation as Holy Grail of the intellectuals: the transcendental code of Romanticism	80	(23)
5 The people on the barricades: the democratic code	103	(20)
6 The nation-state up to the founding of empire: the code of Realpolitik	123	(19)
7 The national identity of the Germans: attempt at a conclusion	142	(3)
Epilogue: German identity between 1945 and 1990	145	(19)
Notes	164	(49)
Bibliography	213	(29)
Index	242