Arminius the Liberator deals with the complex modern reception of Arminius the Cheruscan, commonly called Hermann. Arminius inflicted one of their most devastating defeats on the Romans in the year 9 A.D. by annihilating three legions under the command of Quintilius Varus in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, as it is generally if inaccurately called. This book traces the origin of the Arminius myth in antiquity and its political, artistic, and popular developments since the nineteenth century. The book's central themes are the nationalist use and abuse of history and historical myth in Germany, especially during the Weimar Republic and National Socialism, the reactions to a discredited ideology involving Arminius in post-war Europe, and revivals of his myth in the United States. Special emphasis is on the representation of Arminius in visual media since the 1960s: from painting and theater to cinema, television, and computer animation.

A timely and revealing look at the intertwined histories of science, art, and racism. ‘Race Is Everything’ explores the spurious but influential ideas of so-called racial science in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, and how art was affected by it. David Bindman looks at race in general, but with particular concentration on attitudes toward and representations of people of African and Jewish descent. He argues that behind all racial ideas of the period lies the belief that outward appearance—and especially skull shape, as studied in the pseudoscience of phrenology—can be correlated with inner character and intelligence, and that these could be used to create a seemingly scientific hierarchy of races. The book considers many aspects of these beliefs, including the skull as a racial marker; ancient Egypt as a precedent for Southern slavery; Darwin, race, and aesthetics; the purported “Mediterranean race”; the visual aspects of eugenics; and the racial politics of Emil Nolde.