Intellectuals and the Nation: Collective Identity in a German Axial Age (Cambridge Cultural Social Studies) - Softcover

Giesen, Bernhard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521639964 ISBN 13: 9780521639965

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1998

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review

"This impressive monograph by one of the most reowned German sociologists" Canadian Jrnl of His...The book is much more stimulating than this summary may suggest." Wolfgang E.J. Weber

Book Description

This book proposes a theory of collective and national identity based on culture and language rather than power and politics. A study also of Germany before 1871, it shows how the codes of nineteenth-century German identity in turn became those of the divided Germany between 1945 and 1989.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521639964
• ISBN 13: 9780521639965
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 258