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2 books match the query 'Prussia (Germany)'
The End of Prussia
Gordon A. Craig
University of Wisconsin Press, 1984
One of the livelier debates amongst historians concerns the dates of the beginning and, particularly, the end of Prussian history. Eminent historian Gordon A. Craig explores the slow death of Prussia by examining several key individuals and their actions at four distinct periods of Prussian history.
"Simply said, the book is a beautiful piece. Insightful and lucid. . . . The End of Prussia has the rare quality of being suitable for both the specialist and the more casual student of German history."—Wisconsin Academy Review
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The God behind the Marble
The Fate of Art in the German Aesthetic StateAlice Goff
University of Chicago Press, 2024
A history of Germans’ attempts to transform society through art in an age of revolution.
For German philosophers at the turn of the nineteenth century, beautiful works of art acted as beacons of freedom, instruments of progress that could model and stimulate the moral autonomy of their beholders. Amid the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Germans struggled to uphold these ideals as they contended with the destruction of art collections, looting, and questions about cultural property. As artworks fell prey to the violence they were supposed to transcend, some began to wonder how art could deliver liberation if it could also quickly become a spoil of war. Alice Goff considers a variety of works—including forty porphyry columns from the tomb of Charlemagne, the Quadriga from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Laocoön group from Rome, a medieval bronze reliquary from Goslar, a Last Judgment from Danzig, and the mummified body of an official from the Rhenish hamlet of Sinzig—following the conflicts over the ownership, interpretation, conservation, and exhibition of German collections during the Napoleonic period and its aftermath.
For German philosophers at the turn of the nineteenth century, beautiful works of art acted as beacons of freedom, instruments of progress that could model and stimulate the moral autonomy of their beholders. Amid the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Germans struggled to uphold these ideals as they contended with the destruction of art collections, looting, and questions about cultural property. As artworks fell prey to the violence they were supposed to transcend, some began to wonder how art could deliver liberation if it could also quickly become a spoil of war. Alice Goff considers a variety of works—including forty porphyry columns from the tomb of Charlemagne, the Quadriga from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Laocoön group from Rome, a medieval bronze reliquary from Goslar, a Last Judgment from Danzig, and the mummified body of an official from the Rhenish hamlet of Sinzig—following the conflicts over the ownership, interpretation, conservation, and exhibition of German collections during the Napoleonic period and its aftermath.
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