Introduction : bombs over Dresden and the Rosenkavalier in the skies -- 1. Culture : a noble substitute -- 2. From the republic into exile -- 3. Novalis and Walt Whitman : German romanticism and American democracy -- 4. German culture abroad : victorious in defeat -- 5. French-German culture wars -- 6. German culture at home : a moral failure turned to intellectual advantage -- 7. The survival of the typical German : Faust versus Mephistopheles -- 8. German reunification : the failure of the interpreting class -- 9. Culture as camouflage : the end of central Europe -- 10. Irony and politics : cultural patriotism in Europe and the United States -- 11. Germany after reunification : in search of a moral masterpiece
Summary
During the Allied bombing of Germany, Hitler was more distressed by the loss of cultural treasures than by the leveling of homes. Remarkably, his propagandists broadcast this fact, convinced that it would reveal not his callousness but his sensitivity: the destruction had failed to crush his artist's spirit. It is impossible to begin to make sense of this thinking without understanding what Wolf Lepenies calls The Seduction of Culture in German History. This fascinating and unusual book tells the story of an arguably catastrophic German habit--that of valuing cultural achievement above all els
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-248) and index
