This book provides a new approach to Albrecht Ritschl’s theology. Leif Svensson argues that Ritschl’s theological project must be related to three cultural developments – historical criticism, materialism, and anti-Lutheran polemics – and understood in the context of the de-Christianization of the Bildungsbürgertum in nineteenth-century Germany. “Albrecht Ritschl remains the great unknown of nineteenth-century theology. In this important study, Leif Svensson sheds new light on Ritschl’s thought by relating it to contemporaneous social and cultural developments. Rooted in deep familiarity with German intellectual life of the time, the book convincingly illustrates the value of a history of theology that is mindful of its various contexts.” – Johannes Zachhuber University of Oxford “I confess I was hesitant to blurb a book on Ritschl, but then I read it. Svensson’s well researched presentation of Ritschl’s thought is compelling and forceful. I highly recommend this book.” – Stanley Hauerwas Duke Divinity School “Svensson’s work ably places Ritschl’s contribution to theology in the broader context of the intellectual and cultural history of the nineteenth century. Students of Protestant theology and thought and all interested in the complex relationship between Christian theology and modernity will learn something of value from this important study.” – Thomas Albert Howard Valparaiso University

This book investigates the relationship between nineteenth-century German theological Wissenschaft and the emergence of confessional Lutheranism. This study argues that the first generation of confessional Lutherans contributed to the discourse over the nature of theological Wissenschaft. Part I examines the intellectual context of nineteenth-century theological Wissenschaft. Chapter 2 presents Kant’s and Schelling’s conceptions of Wissenschaft in relationship to theology. Chapter 3 analyzes Schleiermacher’s contribution to the debate about the integrity of theology as a Wissenschaft, and concludes by considering the developments represented by F.C. Baur and Albrecht Ritschl. Part II investigates the different Lutheran approaches to theological Wissenschaft represented by Adolf Harleß, August Vilmar, and Johannes von Hofmann. Chapter 4 examines Harleߒs Theologische Encyklopädie as the first expression towards a confessional Lutheran Wissenschaft. Chapter 5 highlights Vilmar’s antagonistic posture towards modern German theology, while attending to his construction of an alternative approach to modern theology. Chapters 6 and 7 contextualize Hofmann against the landscape of German theology, while situating his theological Wissenschaft within his contentious work Der Schriftbeweis. Chapter 8 reflects upon these efforts at establishing a theological Wissenschaft in service to the church and the university.

How did the affliction we now know as insanity move from a religious phenomenon to a medical one? How did social class, gender, and ethnicity affect the experience of mental trauma and the way psychiatrists diagnosed and treated patients? In answering these questions, this important volume mines the rich and unusually detailed records of one of Germany's first modern insane asylums, the Eberbach Asylum in the duchy of Nassau. It is a book on the historical relationship between madness and modernity that both builds upon and challenges Michel Foucault's landmark work on this topic, a bold study that gives generous consideration to madness from the patient's perspective while also shedding new light on sexuality, politics, and antisemitism in nineteenth-century Germany. Drawing on the case records of several hundred asylum patients, Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness reconstructs the encounters of state officials and medical practitioners with peasant madness and deviancy during a transitional period in the history of both Germany and psychiatry. As author Ann Goldberg explains, this era witnessed the establishment of psychiatry as a legitimate medical specialty during a time of social upheaval, as Germany underwent the shift toward a capitalist order and the modern state. Focusing on such "illnesses" as religious madness, nymphomania, and masturbatory insanity, as well as the construct of Jewishness, she probes the daily encounters in which psychiatric categories were applied, experienced, and resisted within the settings of family, village, and insane asylum. The book is a model of microhistory, breaking new ground in the historiography of psychiatry as it synthetically applies approaches from "the history of everyday life," anthropology, poststructuralism, and feminist studies. In contrast to earlier, anecdotal studies of "the asylum patient," Goldberg employs diagnostic patterns to illuminate the ways in which madness--both in psychiatric practice and in the experience of patients--was structured by gender, class, and "race." She thus examines both the social basis of rural mental trauma in the Vormärz and the political and medical practices that sought to refashion this experience. This study sheds light on a range of issues concerning gender, religion, class relations, ethnicity, and state-building. It will appeal to students and scholars of a number of disciplines.

Since the dawn of Romanticism, artists and intellectuals in Germany have maintained an abiding interest in the gods and myths of antiquity while calling for a new mythology suitable to the modern age. In this study, George S. Williamson examines the factors that gave rise to this distinct and profound longing for myth. In doing so, he demonstrates the entanglement of aesthetic and philosophical ambitions in Germany with some of the major religious conflicts of the nineteenth century. Through readings of key intellectuals ranging from Herder and Schelling to Wagner and Nietzsche, Williamson highlights three crucial factors in the emergence of the German engagement with myth: the tradition of Philhellenist neohumanism, a critique of contemporary aesthetic and public life as dominated by private interests, and a rejection of the Bible by many Protestant scholars as the product of a foreign, "Oriental" culture. According to Williamson, the discourse on myth in Germany remained bound up with problems of Protestant theology and confessional conflict through the nineteenth century and beyond. A compelling adventure in intellectual history, this study uncovers the foundations of Germany's fascination with myth and its enduring cultural legacy.

This book analyzes the problems of nation building in the Central European region of Silesia in 1848 to 1918. The German ethnic model of nation building steeped in language and culture had been replicated in the case of Polish and Czech nationalisms. Silesia became a focal point as an area that was sought after by all three nations.

This four-volume collective project by a team of leading scholars offers a vivid portrait of Jewish history in German-speaking countries over nearly four centuries. This series is sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute, established in 1955 in Jerusalem, London, and New York for the purpose of advancing scholarship on the Jews in German-speaking lands.

German–Turkish relations, which have a long history and generally unrecognized depth, have rarely been examined as mutually formative processes. Isolated instances of influence have been examined in detail, but the historical and still ongoing processes of mutual interaction have rarely been seriously considered. The ruling assumption has been that Germany may have an impact on Turkey, but not the other way around. Religion, Identity and Politics examines this mutual interaction, specifically with regard to religious identities and institutions. It opposes the commonly held assumption that Europe is the abode of secularism and enlightenment, while the lands of Islam are the realm of backwardness and fundamentalism. Both historically and contemporarily, Germany has treated religion as a core aspect of communal and civilizational identity and framed its institutions accordingly; the book explores how there has been, and continues to be, a mutual exchange in this regard between Germany and both the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey. The authors show that the definition of identity and regulation of communities have been explicitly based on religion until the early and since the late twentieth century; the period in between– the age of secular nationalism– which has always been treated as the norm, now appears more clearly as an exception. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, politics, history and religion.