Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines the ways in which selfhood and cultural solidarity came to be understood and lived as historical identities in Prussia during the 1800s, and looks at the remarkable groups of artists and thinkers who became associated with the cultural agenda of the regime during that time.
Trade ReviewReview of the hardback: 'In Becoming Historical, John Toews provides a challenging and thought-provoking reworking of the cultural and intellectual history of Berlin in the early nineteenth century. The analysis Toews offers is sophisticated, subtle and perceptive, providing new perspectives both on the 'old chestnuts' of German intellectual history and on the cultural politics of nationhood. It will undoubtedly emerge as a key text on the cultural and intellectual history of this period.' English Historical Review
Table of ContentsList of illustrations; Preface; Acknowledgements; Philosophical prologue: historical ontology and cultural reformation: Schelling in Berlin, 1841–5; Part I. Historicism in Power: 1840 and the Historical Turn in Prussian Cultural Politics: 1. Nation, church, and the politics of historical identity: Frederick William IV's vision of cultural reformation; 2. 'Redeemed nationality': Christian Bunsen and the transformation of ethnic peoples into ethical communities under the guidance of the historical principle; Part II. Architectural and Musical Historicism: Aesthetic Education and Cultural Reformation: 3. Building historical identities in space and stone: Schinkel's search for the shape of ethical community; 4. The generation of ethical community from the spirit of music: Mendelssohn's musical constructions of historical identity; Part III. Law, Language, and History: Cultural Identity and the Self-Constituting Subject in the Historical School: 5. The tension between immanent and transcendent subjectivity in the Historical School of Law: from Savigny to Stahl; 6. The past as a foreign home: Jacob Grimm and the relation between language and historical identity; 7. Ranke and the Christian-German state: contested historical identities and the transcendent foundations of the historical subject; Antiphilosophical Epilogue: historicizing self-identity in Kierkegaard and Marx, 1841–6; Index.
