Saxon Signposts

 

(Special Issue of German History 17, no. 4, ISSN 0266-3554).   

 

London:  Edward Arnold Publishers, 1999.

 

 

James Retallack

Editor

 

 

Abstract

 

This special issue explores the intersection of culture and power in Germany history. It does so by examining a collection of modernising visions excavated from Saxon history. Supplementing cultural and political analysis with attention to economic and social change, the authors examine the experience of culture vor Ort and the exercise of power at “those points where it becomes capillary, that is, in its more regional and local forms and institutions” (Michel Foucault).

 

The culture / power / history nexus has been explored elsewhere. But why Saxony? A focus on Saxony can provide a unifying principle for divergent explorations of German history by drawing out three common themes:  i) the attempts of liberal reformers, burgher activists, and other culture-builders to challenge the authoritarian state and modernise the exercise of power; ii) the diffusion and circulation of power in modern societies, not only between the ‘centre’ and the ‘periphery’ but around, in between, and through these spaces; and iii) the interpretation of boundaries, frontiers, and other symbolic representations associated with ‘place’ that facilitated individual and local efforts at identity-building.

 

These essays map a multiplicity of paths from the past to the present, charting historical developments that do not converge at a familiar time or space. Nevertheless, scholars will continue to search for other signposts:  those that pointed contemporaries on their way, but also those that hinted at the difficulty of moving from the familiar toward the unknown.

 

Articles

 

James Retallack

Saxon Signposts:  Cultural Battles, Identity Politics, and German Authoritarianism in Transition

 

Robert Beachy

Local Protest and Territorial Reform: Public Debt and Constitutionalism in Early Nineteenth-Century Saxony

 

Glenn Penny

Fashioning Local Identities in an Age of Nation-Building:  Museums, Cosmopolitan Visions, and Intra-German Competition

 

James Retallack

Conservatives and Antisemites in Baden and Saxony

 

Marline Otte

Sarrasani's Theatre of the World:  Monumental Circus Entertainment in Dresden, from Kaiserreich to Third Reich

 

This information is provided by the Department of History at the University of Toronto.
All contents (c) 2001-2002 James Retallack and the University of Toronto. All rights reserved.
Last Updated: 1 July 2002.