Decentering Germany's Classical Center

Colonial Critique and Weimar Classicism

Bibliographic Data

ID21322203
AuthorsTodd Kontje (0000-0001-9269-4908, University of California San Diego, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume93
Issue2
Pages221-236
Publication date2020-04-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe German Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-8831 • E-ISSN: 1756-1183
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/gequ.12134
OpenAlexW3021135231
LanguageEN
References cited24

This essay reflects on the interrelated topics of the Germans’ response to intra‐European conflict and their relation to extra‐European imperialism. Against the myth that the politically fragmented Germans first found unity in the realm of culture and then joined together to defeat Napoleon and his armies, we find instead fictions of fractured identities, conflicts in border zones between collaborators and resistance fighters, regional loyalties, and cosmopolitan hopes. The era often celebrated as Germany's “classical center” was in fact radically decentered. This essay shifts the focus from precolonial fantasies that anticipated the empires of Bismarck and Hitler to efforts on the part of German intellectuals raised in the Holy Roman Empire to imagine alternatives to the imperialist nation‐state and to cast a critical eye on the European conquest of the globe

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art history · Classicism · Colonialism · CONQUEST · Empire · German · Modernity · Political science · Realm · Relation (database) · Resistance (ecology) · State (computer science) · Weimar Republic · Australian History and Society · Classics · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law

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