This is the first complete English translation of Ulrich von Hutten's Latin dialogue Arminius and Eobanus Hessus's Latin preface to its posthumous publication (1529). The translations are enhanced by extensive literary analysis in the context of social and political change in sixteenth-century Germany and German literary history. Hutten's literary role is illustrated further by discussion of his dialogue, Inspicientes, or Die Anschauenden, and by comparative analysis of Hutten-related works by Heinrich von Kleist, Die Hermannschlacht (1808), Gottfried Keller, Ufenau (1858), and Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Huttens letzte Tage (1871). The study draws attention to Hutten's ethnic chauvinism, construed by later generations as German patriotism and used to endorse attitudes and prejudices alien to Hutten's original ideas. The English translations and analyses provide broader access to Hutten's writings and ideas and give insights into the links between late Roman history, society and politics in the Reformation period, and German patriotism of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

As the first book-length examination of the role of German print culture in mediating Europe's knowledge of the newly discovered people of Africa, South Asia, and the Americas, this work highlights a unique and early incident of visual accuracy and an unprecedented investment in the practice of ethnography.

Imperial Fictions explores ways in which writers from late antiquity to the present have imagined communities before and beyond the nation-state. It takes as its point of departure challenges to the discrete nation-state posed by globalization, migration, and European integration today, but then circles back to the beginnings of European history after the fall of the Roman Empire. Unlike nationalist literary historians of the nineteenth century, who sought the tribal roots of an allegedly homogeneous people, this study finds a distant mirror of analogous processes today in the fluid mixtures and movements of peoples. Imperial Fictions argues that it is time to stop thinking about today’s multicultural present as a deviation from a culturally monolithic past. We should rather consider the various permutations of “German” identities that have been negotiated within local and imperial contexts from the early Middle Ages to the present.

An exploration of the interaction between art and politics in early modern Germany, this work focuses on art, political in content, produced by the Augsburg artist Jörg Breu the Elder during the second and third decodes of the sixteenth century. The book argues for the function of the art as fashioning political identities. The artist Jörg Breu is first introduced. His work for the city of Augsburg and for Habsburg and Wittelsbach rulers are examined. These works are placed within their historical context and analyzed according to how they articulate themes of warfare, ceremony, and history in order to construct political identity. The analysis of Breu's city chronicle and of the response of his art to political contest is particularly useful for historians of art and of politics.