The Italian Renaissance in the German Historical Imagination, 1860-1930

This innovative study takes a fresh look at a decisive period in the development of Western historiography; the German engagement with the Italian Renaissance in the decades from the German unification to the Weimar republic. Examining the writings of Nietzsche, Burckhardt and Mann, alongside a wealth of visual sources, Dr Martin Ruehl traces the way in which the perception of the Italian Renaissance in this period is linked to, and to some extent shapes, the changing political discourse of the German middle class at a crucial moment of its modernisation. He argues that this discourse was tied to questions of religion, Kultur and national identity, and determined by rival tropes such as medievalism and the cult of the Reformation. The book ultimately reveals the Renaissance as a site of contestation and a concept fraught with the expectations, hopes and fears that defined the German bourgeoisie's experience of modernity.