Collecting and Historical Consciousness in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany

Susan A. Crane

Published by Cornell University Press 2000

Collecting and Historical Consciousness in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany

Susan A. Crane

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501723599

Overview
Contents

About this book

This provocative book challenges long-held assumptions about the nature of historical consciousness in Germany. Susan A. Crane argues that the ever-more-elaborate preservation of the historical may actually reduce the likelihood that history can be...

Author / Editor information

Susan A. Crane is Associate Professor of Modern European History at the University of Arizona.

Reviews

Christopher Clark:

This is a knowing, intelligent book.

David McKibbin, University of Northern Iowa:

Susan A. Crane's study of historical artifact collecting in nineteenth-century Germany offers valuable insights for at least three widely diverse academic audiences... Thought-provoking.... Crane... has written a book of significant merit.

James E. Young, University of Massachusetts at Amherst:

Susan A. Crane's book takes to an exciting new level the discussions of the collection and preservation of historical objects, and of the production of historical consciousness itself. Nobody has explored more lucidly than Crane the fascinating interplay between personal and public history, between telling the truth and living it.

Andrew Lees, Rutgers University:

Susan A. Crane thoughtfully addresses a large theme in the intellectual and cultural history of Germany during the decades after the Napoleonic Wars: the growth of a new interest in the past and its relationship to the rise of nationalism.

Sensitive to the malleability of historical memory, Crane charts the evolution and impact of amateur historical consciousness in Germanic regions after Napoleon.... This is a difficult, but rewarding, deftly nuanced interpretation of the paths taken toward the creation of Germany's 'pasts.'

Andreas Urs Sommer, University of Greifswald:

In her excellent book, Susan A. Crane traces the rise of historical consciousness in the first decades of the nineteenth-century Germany and shows how closely it was linked to the collecting activities of individuals and groups.... Crane's theoretical discussions will stimulate the philosophical debate about collecting.

Stephen Bann, University of Kent at Canterbury:

Collecting and Historical Consciousness is a book of great merit. Through mediating between groups—'collective collecting'—and institutions, Susan Crane earns the right to explore the subjective investment of the individual collector. This is likely to become a central reference point for future development of museology and the history of collecting.

Helena Ragg-Kirkby, University of Leeds:

Susan Crane's new study should be received with pleasure for a number of reasons. First, she addresses a period of literary-cultural history that is.... distinctly and undeservedly unfashionable. Second, she tackles it with admirable thoroughness and a good deal of subtlety, always remaining clearly focussed on her argument.... In short, it is a clear and intelligent attempt to demonstrate that, the more collectors (both as individuals and as groups) try to preserve the historical, the less likely people are to experience it with the freshness and spontaneity characteristic of the early collectors.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
PREFACE Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
1. THE HISTORICAL SUBLIME Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. THE COLLECTION AND PRESERVATION OF HISTORICAL OBJECTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
3. Collective Collecting in ”The Age of Associations” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	60
4. Finding Form for the Content:· Historical Museums Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	105
5. Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 224
Illustrations
- Other: 10 halftones
Keywords: Europe; History

eBook

Published: October 18, 2018
ISBN: 9781501723599