Overview

For two centuries, Gesamtkunstwerk-the ideal of the total work of art -has exerted a powerful influence over artistic discourse and practice, spurring new forms of collaboration and provoking debates over the political instrumentalization of art. Despite its popular conflation with the work of Richard Wagner, Gesamtkunstwerk's lineage and legacies extend well beyond German Romanticism, as this wide-ranging collection demonstrates. In eleven compact chapters, scholars from a variety of disciplines trace the idea's evolution in German-speaking Europe, from its foundations in the early nineteenth century to its manifold articulations and reimaginings in the twentieth century and beyond, providing an uncommonly broad perspective on a distinctly modern cultural form.

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9781800730175

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Contributors are deft in negotiating and teasing out how aspects of the Gesamtkunstwerk shaped the German cultural landscape and at the same time mirrored the changing nature of politics and consumerism. This collection will prove to be an invaluable resource for historians interested in all aspects of German culture. * Choice

Author Information

David Imhoof is Professor of History at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. Bloomsbury Press recently published his textbook So, About Modern Europe: A Conversational History from the Enlightenment to the Present. He is the author of Becoming a Nazi Town (Michigan, 2013) and co-editor of a special edition of Colloquia Germanica (2016) on sound studies. He is currently writing a history of the German record industry. Imhoof also directs the Music and Sound Studies Network for the German Studies Association.

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