Weimar Thought: A Contested Legacy

Introduction: Weimar Thought: Continuity and Crisis 1 Peter E. Gordon and John P. McCormick Part I: Law, Politics, Society 1 Weimar Sociology 15 David Kettler and Colin Loader 2 Weimar Psychology: Holistic Visions and Trained Intuition 35 Mitchell G. Ash 3 Legal Theory and the Weimar Crisis of Law and Social Change 55 John P. McCormick 4 The Legacy of Max Weber in Weimar Political and Social Theory 73 Dana Villa Part II: Philosophy, Theology, Science 5 Kulturphilosophie in Weimar Modernism 101 John Michael Krois 6 Weimar Philosophy and the Fate of Neo-Kantianism 115 Frederick Beiser 7 Weimar Philosophy and the Crisis of Historical Thinking 133 Charles Bambach 8 Weimar Theology: From Historicism to Crisis 150 Peter E. Gordon 9 Method, Moment, and Crisis in Weimar Science 179 Cathryn Carson Part III: Aesthetics, Literature, Film 10 Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, and Weimar Criticism 203 Michael Jennings 11 Writers and Politics in the Weimar Republic 220 Karin Gunnemann 12 Aesthetic Fundamentalism in Weimar Poetry: Stefan George and his Circle, 1918-1933 240 Martin A. Ruehl 13 Weimar Film Theory 273 Sabine Hake 14 The Politics of Art and Architecture at the Bauhaus, 1919-1933 291 John V. Maciuika 15 Aby Warburg and the Secularization of the Image 316 Michael P. Steinberg Part IV: Themes of an Epoch 16 Eastern Wisdom in an Era of Western Despair: Orientalism in 1920s Central Europe 341 Susanne Marchand 17 Weimar Femininity: Within and Beyond the Law 361 Tracie Matysik 18 The Weimar Left: Theory and Practice 377 Martin Jay 19 The Aftermath: Reflections on the Culture and Ideology of National Socialism 394 Anson Rabinbach Weimar Thought: A Chronology 407 Contributors 417 Index 423

Peter E. Gordon is the Amabel B. James Professor of History at Harvard University. He is the author of Continental Divide and Rosenzweig and Heidegger. John P. McCormick is professor of political science at the University of Chicago. His books include Machiavellian Democracy and Weber, Habermas, and Transformations of the European State.

"This is the first work in a generation that presents a comprehensive overview of Weimar culture with all its complexity and contradictions. It successfully shows continuities and discontinuities with the past, and tensions that resist reduction. The book's reach--from theology to the biological sciences, and literary criticism to legal theory--goes far beyond any other volume I am aware of on the same subject."--Peter Carl Caldwell, Rice University