Down from Olympus

Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970
Erscheinungsjahr 2003
ISBN: 978-0-691-11478-1
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 424 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 721 g

Since the publication of Eliza May Butler's Tyranny of Greece over Germany in 1935, the obsession of the German educated elite with the ancient Greeks has become an accepted, if severely underanalyzed, cliché. In Down from Olympus, Suzanne Marchand attempts to come to grips with German Graecophilia, not as a private passion but as an institutionally generated and preserved cultural trope. The book argues that nineteenth-century philhellenes inherited both an elitist, normative aesthetics and an ascetic, scholarly ethos from their Romantic predecessors; German "neohumanists" promised to reconcile these intellectual commitments, and by so doing, to revitalize education and the arts. Focusing on the history of classical archaeology, Marchand shows how the injunction to imitate Greek art was made the basis for new, state-funded cultural institutions. Tracing interactions between scholars and policymakers that made possible grand-scale cultural feats like the acquisition of the Pergamum Altar, she underscores both the gains in specialized knowledge and the failures in social responsibility that were the distinctive products of German neohumanism.This book discusses intellectual and institutional aspects of archaeology and philhellenism, giving extensive treatment to the history of prehistorical archaeology and German "orientalism." Marchand traces the history of the study, excavation, and exhibition of Greek art as a means to confront the social, cultural, and political consequences of the specialization of scholarship in the last two centuries.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Marchand, Suzanne L.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Kultursoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: 19. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte Kunstgeschichte: 20./21. Jahrhundert
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike Klassische Archäologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xv

INTRODUCTION Xvii

ONE The Making of a Cultural Obsession 3

TWO From Ideals to Institutions 36

THREE The Vicissitudes of Grand-Scale Archaeology 75

FOUR Trouble in Olympus 116

FIVE Excavating the Barbarian 152

SIX The Peculiarities of German Orientalism 188

SEVEN Kultur and the World War 228

EIGHT The Persistence of the Old Regime 263

NINE The Third Humanism and the Return of Romantic Aesthetics 302

TEN The Decline of Philhellenism, 1933-1970 341

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 377

INDEX 391