19th Century Intellectuals

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

Germany is famously said to have been a “Kulturnation” (cultural nation) before it became a “Staatsnation” (a political nation with a nation state). Since the days of Goethe and Schiller, Germany has often been portrayed as a country of poetry and thought (“Land der Dichter und Denker”). Poets, thinkers and artists have not restricted themselves to the realm of the fine arts, however, but have also developed political ideas. They have been instrumental in shaping the concept of the German nation and played a crucial part in nation-building processes throughout the 19th century by promoting nationalism as well as criticizing it. In this graduate-level seminar, we will explore the history of this relationship between intellectuals, artists, and the German nation from the Napoleonic wars to the First World War by looking at influential German figures such as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Heinrich Heine, Bettina von Arnim or Richard Wagner as well as famous intellectuals from abroad who visited Germany and took an interest in German national affairs such as Germaine de Staël or W.E.B. Du Bois. We will not focus on individual writers or artist alone, however, but also look at the role of cultural institutions such as the Germanische Nationalmuseum in Nurenberg (founded in 1852), the Nationalgalerie in Berlin (opened in 1876) or the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar (founded in 1885). Thirdly, we will analyze the role of the new mass media of the 19th century which helped to form a public sphere that transcended the regional level and functioned as a resonance space for national ideas and images. By doing so, we will combine approaches from intellectual history with those of cultural and media history in order to gain a better understanding of how, during the 19th century, individual thinkers, artists and poets interacted with cultural institutions and the public sphere in shaping and contesting ideas of the German nation.