German Mysticism and the Politics of Culture

German Mysticism and the Politics of Culture PDF

Author: Ulrike Wiethaus

Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781433108877

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Probing deeply into texts by and about prominent Christian mystics, religious authors, and saints, German Mysticism and the Politics of Culture challenges the reader to rethink the medieval past as a contemporary presence. This «presence of the past» shapes memory of place, valorizes the trope of ecstatic sexual union as death, and continues the religious marginalization of female voice and authority. The chapters focus on the works and lives of Hadewijch, Marie d'Oignies, Dionysius of Ryckel, Heinrich Seuse, Margarete Ebner, St. Elisabeth, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, and the stigmatic Therese Neumann. Part One of the volume examines the dynamics of cultural memory and forgetting as they relate to issues of sexuality, female authority, and national politics; Part Two explores themes of love and death, erasure and displacement. Medieval Christian mysticism, the author argues, cannot be narrated as a story of great cultural accomplishment but, rather, as a fundamentally agonistic scenario shaped by actors whose impact still affects us today.

The Politics of Cultural Despair

The Politics of Cultural Despair PDF

Author: Fritz R. Stern

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-09-01

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0520342690

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This is a study in the pathology of cultural criticism. By analyzing the thought and influence of three leading critics of modern Germany, this study will demonstrate the dangers and dilemmas of a particular type of cultural despair. Lagarde, Langbehn, and Moeller van den Bruck-their active lives spanning the years from the middle of the past century to the threshold of Hitler's Third Reich-attacked, often incisively and justly, the deficiencies of German culture and the German spirit. But they were more than the critics of Germany's cultural crisis; they were its symptoms and victims as well. Unable to endure the ills which they diagnosed and which they had experienced in their own lives, they sought to become prophets who would point the way to a national rebirth. Hence, they propounded all manner of reforms, ruthless and idealistic, nationalistic and utopian. It was this leap from despair to utopia across all existing reality that gave their thought its fantastic quality.

Mysticism and Materialism in the Wake of German Idealism

Mysticism and Materialism in the Wake of German Idealism PDF

Author: W. Ezekiel Goggin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-30

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1000555828

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This book argues that the rediscovery of mystical theology in nineteenth-century Germany not only helped inspire idealism and romanticism, but also planted the seeds of their overcoming by way of critical materialism. Thanks in part to the Neoplatonic turn in the works of J. G. Fichte, as well as the enthusiasm of mining engineer Franz X. von Baader, mystical themes gained a critical currency, and mystical texts returned to circulation. This reawakening of the mystical tradition influenced romantic and idealist thinkers such as Novalis and Hegel, and also shaped later critical interventions by Marx, Benjamin, and Bataille. Rather than rehearsing well-known connections to Swedenborg or Böhme, this study goes back further to the works of Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, Catherine of Siena, and Angela of Foligno. The book offers a new perspective on the reception of mystical self-interrogation in nineteenth-century German thought and will appeal to scholars of philosophy, history, theology, and religious studies.

German Culture and Christianity; Their Controversy in the Time 1770-1880

German Culture and Christianity; Their Controversy in the Time 1770-1880 PDF

Author: Joseph Gostwick

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 9781230286280

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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1882 edition. Excerpt: ... early rejection of historical Christianity. In both his early and his middle life this rejection was, in its extent, not unlike the unbelief of the rationalists who were so numerous in his time; yet he was not altogether a man of their school. They did not like his poetry; and he did not like their cold, prosaic teaching. There are three facts that may be easily established on evidences supplied by his own writings: --He rejected the central tenet of Christianity; he found for himself and others like himself, but "not for all men "--this he expressly tells us--that moral and assthetic culture might serve partly as a substitute for religion; lastly, in the time of his old age, he entertained feelings of veneration for the leading ideas--even for the mysteries--of the Christian faith. The evidences on which these assertions rest may here be briefly noticed. There is found in Goethe's correspondence one letter especially remarkable as containing a distinct and emphatic declaration that he rejects the truth--the central tenet--of the Christian religion. He gives not a syllable of reasoning to justify his unbelief, but asserts it as an axiom. Thus he gives, in few words, the main result of all the rationalism so popular in his time. He was a great man; but when writing this declaration he was in fact making himself an echo of the vulgar rationalism he had learned from Basedow (pp. 59, 115) and his disciples. The tone of the letter--addressed, by-the-by, to a faithful old friend--is altogether wrong, and would be so, even were the subject one not demanding any especial reverence. A man's faith--whatever it be, if but earnest--ought never to be thus rudely contradicted. The letter referred to was addressed to Lavater as a reply to an assertion...

A Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany in the Late Middle Ages

A Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany in the Late Middle Ages PDF

Author: Elizabeth Andersen

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 9004258450

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The volume explores the hitherto uncharted late medieval religious landscape of Northern Germany, from 13th-century Helfta to the 15th-century Lüneburg convents. The mystical and devotional writing of Northern Germany is contextualised through chapters on the Netherlands, Scandinavia and East Prussia. The seminal influence of the liturgy on these texts and their transmission is revealed in the creative interplay of Latin and Low German. Through the individual chapters and their appendices, which also contain translations into English, the reader can access a wealth of texts produced by communities of religious and lay women who write learnedly in Latin and fervently in Low German. Together, the chapters and appendices reveal a fascinating regional "mystical culture" which also reverberated across Northern Europe. Contributors include: Jürgen Bärsch, Anne Bollmann, Veerle Fraeters, Ulrike Hascher-Burger, Ernst Hellgardt, Tanja Mattern, Balazs Nemes, Sara S. Poor, Eva Schlotheuber, Almut Suerbaum, and Geert Warnar.

Mysticism as Modernity

Mysticism as Modernity PDF

Author: William Morris Crooke

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 9783039105793

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This work reconsiders the connections between mysticism, nationalism and modernity in twentieth-century German cultures. Disengaging mysticism from occultism, the author creates a new space for reconsidering mysticism's links to larger structures of modernity already at play at the turn of the century. Rather than dismissing mysticism as a strain of anti-modern irrationalism with troubling links to radical politics such as Nazism, the author reconceptualizes modern mysticism as an unwittingly logical expression of the same compression of time and space created by the emergence of the newspaper, radio, railways and telegraph and reflected in the novels of Hermann Hesse, Robert Musil and Max Frisch.

German Mysticism From Hildegard of Bingen to Ludwig Wittgenstein

German Mysticism From Hildegard of Bingen to Ludwig Wittgenstein PDF

Author: Andrew Weeks

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1993-01-01

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9780791414194

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This book offers the reader an introduction to the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Tauler, Nicholas of Cusa, Paracelsus, Jacob Boehme, Angelus Silesius, Novalis and includes the more recent thinkers, such as Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein, who were influenced by the tradition. It is the first study of its scope to take into account the much ignored historical preconditions of German mysticism and the first to trace the thematic evolution of mystical literature from a core of biblical and Augustinian materials. It also follows in the footsteps of recent scholarship in showing how German mysticism interacts with other currents in intellectual history such as the Reformation, Romanticism, or Modernism. Instead of murky generalizations, the reader will find clear discussions of representative literary documents, analyzed with an eye to theme, source, style, function, and influence.

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