What do you think?
Rate this book
Art as History: Episodes in the Culture and Politics of Nineteenth-Century Germany
Paintings and graphics, novels and poems are historical sources as well as aesthetic objects. Artists themselves become historians when they interpret the pastby painting a historical scene, for instance, or by discussing earlier times in a novel. Artists both reflect and shape their environment. These concepts underlie Peter Paret's new study of Germany in the nineteenth century.
The book spans fifty years of German history, from the rise of liberalism in the 1830s to the Franco-Prussian War, German unification, and the fading of liberalism in the new empire. Each chapter treats one or more works of art or literature, and links the background, creation, and impact of these works to the politics of the time. A phase of the Revolution of 1848, for example, is illuminated by Alfred Rethel's woodcuts depicting civil strife as a medieval dance of death; a novel by Theodor Fontane suggests psychological inadequacies as a reason for Prussia's collapse before Napoleon and implies that modern Germany suffers from similar weaknesses.
On one level, Art as History is political history seen through the arts. On another level, works of art are discussed for their own sake. By paying attention to the ways society and politics interact with the artist's psychology and intentions, and with the changing characteristics of his discipline, we gain a deeper understanding of his aesthetic achievement.
Over a hundred reproductions of works of art and of contemporary newspaper illustrations are closely integrated into the text. Innovative in its fusion of narrative history with aesthetic and intellectual analysis, in its exploration of the interplay of history and the arts, and as a study of the artist in a changing world, the book helps us understand why Germany's vigorous bourgeois culture failed politically, and offers new perspectives on the rise of Prussia-Germany to great and flawed power.
Art as History is also being published in a German translation.
The book spans fifty years of German history, from the rise of liberalism in the 1830s to the Franco-Prussian War, German unification, and the fading of liberalism in the new empire. Each chapter treats one or more works of art or literature, and links the background, creation, and impact of these works to the politics of the time. A phase of the Revolution of 1848, for example, is illuminated by Alfred Rethel's woodcuts depicting civil strife as a medieval dance of death; a novel by Theodor Fontane suggests psychological inadequacies as a reason for Prussia's collapse before Napoleon and implies that modern Germany suffers from similar weaknesses.
On one level, Art as History is political history seen through the arts. On another level, works of art are discussed for their own sake. By paying attention to the ways society and politics interact with the artist's psychology and intentions, and with the changing characteristics of his discipline, we gain a deeper understanding of his aesthetic achievement.
Over a hundred reproductions of works of art and of contemporary newspaper illustrations are closely integrated into the text. Innovative in its fusion of narrative history with aesthetic and intellectual analysis, in its exploration of the interplay of history and the arts, and as a study of the artist in a changing world, the book helps us understand why Germany's vigorous bourgeois culture failed politically, and offers new perspectives on the rise of Prussia-Germany to great and flawed power.
Art as History is also being published in a German translation.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1989
7 people want to read
About the author
Peter Paret
55 books22 followersAmerican historian who has specialised in German military history in the Napoleonic era and German artists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 23, 2021
A really unique looks at the significant historical events of 18th- and 19th-century Germany through the era's greatest artists. I really enjoyed the focus on German art, and I definitely plan to learn more about the artists featured.
Paret begins with the generation that interpreted the reign of Frederick the Great in the first decade of the 19th Century. He shows how the woodcuts they produced shaped a recent "golden age" for Germans in an era dominated by Napoleon and experiments with republican rule.
In the Prussian writer, Theodor Fontane, Paret shows how one liberal writer moved toward republicanism but ultimately turned against the more liberalizing forces of socialism and social reform. Fontane showed a deep sense of patriotism and a deep skepticism of the enduring utility of the nobility in Prussia's deeply conservative society.
The revolutions of 1848 are illustrated by Adolph Menzel, probably my favorite 'discovery' of the book. Again, artists weren't the vanguard of revolution, as one might expect. It's hard to explain. It may be because artists still depended so much on the gentry for income. It may be because of the gulf between working-class and lower-class social revolutionaries and the educated intelligencia.
In Joseph Viktor Scheffel, Germany found a writer who was deeply immersed in scholarship, a Badener who differed from his duchy's embrace of the 1848 revolutions. He invented the Professorenroman, a work of fiction that also reflects deep scholarship. It reminds me of recent Germany films like Downfall and The Bader-Meinhof Complex, which felt as detailed as encyclopedia entries. This is a theme I have seen a lot in German art.
In the final chapter, Paret looks at artists' descriptions of the founding of the 2nd Reich, following the triumph of the Franco-Prussian War. The deep conservatism of the arts in Germany are again on display, but there are signs of skepticism, thanks to Adolph Menzel, one of the true giants of German 19th-century art.
I bought this book because I was hoping for a longer-view of German art history. (If you know of one, please message me.) But this book took me much deeper into my understanding of German culture, and I was really intrigued. Highly recommended.
Paret begins with the generation that interpreted the reign of Frederick the Great in the first decade of the 19th Century. He shows how the woodcuts they produced shaped a recent "golden age" for Germans in an era dominated by Napoleon and experiments with republican rule.
In the Prussian writer, Theodor Fontane, Paret shows how one liberal writer moved toward republicanism but ultimately turned against the more liberalizing forces of socialism and social reform. Fontane showed a deep sense of patriotism and a deep skepticism of the enduring utility of the nobility in Prussia's deeply conservative society.
The revolutions of 1848 are illustrated by Adolph Menzel, probably my favorite 'discovery' of the book. Again, artists weren't the vanguard of revolution, as one might expect. It's hard to explain. It may be because artists still depended so much on the gentry for income. It may be because of the gulf between working-class and lower-class social revolutionaries and the educated intelligencia.
In Joseph Viktor Scheffel, Germany found a writer who was deeply immersed in scholarship, a Badener who differed from his duchy's embrace of the 1848 revolutions. He invented the Professorenroman, a work of fiction that also reflects deep scholarship. It reminds me of recent Germany films like Downfall and The Bader-Meinhof Complex, which felt as detailed as encyclopedia entries. This is a theme I have seen a lot in German art.
In the final chapter, Paret looks at artists' descriptions of the founding of the 2nd Reich, following the triumph of the Franco-Prussian War. The deep conservatism of the arts in Germany are again on display, but there are signs of skepticism, thanks to Adolph Menzel, one of the true giants of German 19th-century art.
I bought this book because I was hoping for a longer-view of German art history. (If you know of one, please message me.) But this book took me much deeper into my understanding of German culture, and I was really intrigued. Highly recommended.
Displaying 1 of 1 review