Inspiration Bonaparte?

Inspiration Bonaparte?: German Culture and Napoleonic Occupation (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)

Seán Allan & Jeffrey L. High (Eds)

Camden House (September 15, 2021)

Hardcover: 328 pages

ISBN-13: 9781640140943

Two hundred years after his death, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) continues to resonate as a fascinating, ambivalent, and polarizing figure. Differences of opinion as to whether Bonaparte should be viewed as the executor of the principles of the French Revolution or as the figure who was principally responsible for their corruption are as pronounced today as they were at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Contributing to what had been an uneasy German relationship with the French Revolution, the rise of Bonaparte was accompanied by a pattern of Franco-German hostilities that inspired both enthusiastic support and outraged dissent in the German-speaking states.

The fourteen essays that comprise Inspiration Bonaparte examine the mythologization of Napoleon in German literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and explore the significant impact of Napoleonic occupation on a broad range of fields including philosophy, painting, politics, the sciences, education, and film. As the contributions from leading scholars emphasize, the contradictory attitudes toward Bonaparte held by so many prominent German thinkers are a reflection of his enduring status as a figure through whom the trauma of shattered late-Enlightenment expectations of sociopolitical progress and evolving concepts of identity politics is mediated.

SEÁN ALLAN is Professor of German at the University of St Andrews. JEFFREY L. HIGH is Professor of German Studies at California State University, Long Beach.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Napoleon: Art, Literature, and Occupation

1: Prelude-Pre-Occupation Bonaparte:

Historical and Literary Conquerors in Schiller's Life, Thought, and Works

Jeffrey L. High

2: Schiller's Johanna and Collin's Bianca as Women('s)-Liberators in Anti-Napoleonic Drama

Rebecca Stewart

3: Friedrich Hölderlin, the French Revolution, and Napoleon: Politics, Poetry, Philosophy

Laura Anna Macor

4: The Anecdote on the Battlefield: Napoleon-Kleist-Kluge

Christian Moser

5: "Der große Schauspieler, Napoleon Buonaparte": August von Kotzebue's Antitheatrical Politics

Elystan Griffiths

6: An Ingenious Tyrant: The Representation of Napoleon Bonaparte by German Women Writers

Elisabeth Krimmer

7: Icons of Resistance: Kleist, Le Musée Napoléon, and Queen Luise of Prussia

Seán Allan

Part II: Napoleon: Political Science and Natural Science

8: The European Machine God: The Image of Napoleon Bonaparte in the Political Writings of Jean Paul

Helmut Schneider

9: Saul Ascher's Napoleon

Bernd Fischer

10: Napoleon's Campaigns: Models for "French" Revolutionary Science Abroad and at Home?

Mary Orr

11: Napoleonic Occupation and the Militarization of the Sciences:

The Case of Johannes Scherr and the Zurich Polytechnic

Andrew Cusack

Part III: Inspiration Bonaparte: German Receptions from Vormärz to the Present

12: "We are all possessed"! Napoleon and Inspiration in German Naturalist Drama

Michael White (University of St Andrews)

13: "Arnold Schoenberg's Setting of Byron's Ode to Napoleon: Fighting Hitler's Regime in Byron's and Beethoven's Wake

Wolf Kittler (University of California, Santa Barbara)

14: The Emperor's Clothes: Napoleon as a Screen Icon

Susanne Kord (University College London)

Notes on Contributors