German Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democratic Renewal: Culture and Politics After 1945 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781107049574)

This book examines how democracy was rethought in Germany in the wake of National Socialism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. Focusing on a loose network of public intellectuals in the immediate postwar years, Sean Forner traces their attempts to reckon with the experience of Nazism and scour Germany's ambivalent political and cultural traditions for materials with which to build a better future. In doing so, he reveals, they formulated an internally variegated but distinctly participatory vision of democratic renewal - a paradoxical counter-elitism of intellectual elites. Although their projects ran aground on internal tensions and on the Cold War, their commitments fueled critique and dissent in the two postwar Germanys during the 1950s and thereafter. The book uncovers a conception of political participation that went beyond the limited possibilities of the Cold War era and influenced the political struggles of later decades in both East and West.

Author: Sean A. Forner
ISBN-10: 1107049571
ISBN-13: 9781107049574
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 10/23/2014
Pages: 396
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.70lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 1.10d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2015 pg. 1393