A Cultural History of the Modern Age

The Crisis of the European Soul

Egon Friedell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351535809
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

Volume three of A Cultural History of the Modern Age finishes a journey that begins with Descartes in the first volume and ends with Freud and the psychoanalytical movement in the third volume. Friedell describes the contents of these books as a series of performances, starting with the birth of the man of the Modern Age, followed by flowering of this epoch, and concludes with the death of the Modern Age.

This huge landscape provides an intertwining of the material and the cultural, the civil and the military, from the high points of creative flowering in Europe to death and emptiness. The themes convey multiple messages: romanticism and liberalism opens the cultural scene, encased in a movement from The Congress of Vienna and its claims of peaceful co-existence to the Franco-German War. The final segment covers the period from Bismarck's generation to World War I. In each instance, the quotidian life of struggle, racial, religious, and social class is seen through the lens of the mighty figures of the period.

The works of the period's great figures are shown in the new light of the human search for symbolism, the search for superman, the rise of individualism and decline of history as a source for knowledge. This third volume is painted in dark colors, a foreboding of the world that was to come, of political extremes, and intellectual exaggerations. The author looks forward to a postmodern Europe in which there is a faint glean of light from the other side. What actually appeared was the glare of Nazism and Communism, each claiming the future.

Index

Arebours (Huys-mans), III 439

Abdul Hamid, III 367

Abélard, I 75

1. III 402

Ablauf des Lebens, Der (Fliess), I 53

Abraham a Sancta Clara, II 118

Absalom, I 330

Absolutism, II 15, 117

Académie française, II 73

Achard, II 438

Achilles, I 63

Acta Eruditorum (Leipzig), II 107, 117, 131, 265

Addison, II 190, 191

Addresses to the GermanNation (Fichte), II 425

Adler, Alfred, I 58–9, 62, 67

1. III 353

Æneas Silvius, I 174, 180

Æschines, I 175

Æschylus, II 96, 145, 328, 335, 355, 434

1. III 47, 306, 312

Æsthetic (Vischer), II 335

Africaine, L’, III 125

Against the Peasant Robbers and Murderers (Luther), I 251

Agassiz, III 181

Agatharcus, II 337

Agathon, III 470

Agathon (Wieland), II 366

Agesilaus, I 304

Agnes Bernauer (Hebbel), III 232

Agnosticism, III 176

Agricola, George, I 207

Ägyptische Königstochter, Die (Ebers), III 231

Ahnfrau (Grillparzer), III 43

Ährental, III 367

Alarcón, II 61

Alarcos, II 422

Alba, I 295, 311

Albert (Albertus Magnus), I 175

Albert, Prince Consort, III 158

Alberti, Leon Battista, I 149, 157, 176, 181

Albrecht, Archduke, III 258, 259, 262, 263, 266, 276–7

Alcæus, II 345

Alceste (Gluck), II 301, 366

1. III 307

Alchemy, I 209

Alcibiades, I 129, 179

1. II 337, 348, 352, 35...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• Book IV: Romanticism and Liberalism
• Book V: Imperialism and Impressionism
• Chronology
• Index