Time and Power
eBook - PDF

Time and Power

Visions of History in German Politics, from the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich

  1. 311 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Time and Power

Visions of History in German Politics, from the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich

About this book

From the author of the national bestseller The Sleepwalkers, a book about how the exercise of power is shaped by different concepts of time

This groundbreaking book presents new perspectives on how the exercise of power is shaped by different notions of time. Acclaimed historian Christopher Clark draws on four key figures from German history—Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Prussia, Frederick the Great, Otto von Bismarck, and Adolf Hitler—to look at history through a temporal lens and ask how historical actors and their regimes embody unique conceptions of time.

Inspired by the insights of Reinhart Koselleck and François Hartog, two pioneers of the "temporal turn" in historiography, Clark shows how Friedrich Wilhelm rejected the notion of continuity with the past, believing instead that a sovereign must liberate the state from the entanglements of tradition to choose freely among different possible futures. He demonstrates how Frederick the Great abandoned this paradigm for a neoclassical vision of history in which sovereign and state transcend time altogether, and how Bismarck believed that the statesman's duty was to preserve the timeless permanence of the state amid the torrent of historical change. Clark describes how Hitler did not seek to revolutionize history like Stalin and Mussolini, but instead sought to evade history altogether, emphasizing timeless racial archetypes and a prophetically foretold future.

Elegantly written and boldly innovative, Time and Power takes readers from the Thirty Years' War to the fall of the Third Reich, revealing the connection between political power and the distinct temporalities of the leaders who wield it.

Information

Publisher
Princeton University Press
Year
2019
Print ISBN
9780691217321
9780691181653
eBook ISBN
9780691185989
Topic
History
Subtopic
German History
Index
History
THe 
HisTory 
macHine
[ 
53 
]
of 
which 
occasions 
we 
so 
lamentably 
spoiled, 
destroyed, 
ruined 
and 
devastated 
land 
and 
people’.
94
Woven 
together 
of 
material 
drawn 
from 
the 
forty‑odd 
printed 
weekly 
newspapers 
published 
in 
the 
cities 
of 
the 
Holy 
Roman 
Empire, 
histories 
of 
this 
kind 
made 
it 
possible 
to 
imagine 
the 
proximate 
future 
not 
as 
the 
ful‑
filment 
of 
a 
preordained 
plan, 
but 
as 
empty, 
like 
the 
still‑ 
unprinted 
pages 
of 
a 
newspaper, 
waiting 
to 
be 
lled 
with 
the 
acts 
and 
events 
of 
the 
powerful.
95
This 
was 
precisely 
that 
world 
of 
‘conjunctures’ 
(
Conjuncturen
) 
and 
‘trends’ 
(
Läufe
) 
the 
Elec‑
tor 
so 
often 
invoked 
in 
his 
communications 
with 
the 
Estates.
In 
his 
‘royal 
memoirs’, 
a 
condential 
text 
intended 
for 
the 
eyes 
of 
his 
successor, 
Louis 
XIV 
observed 
that 
kings 
owe 
an 
fiGUre 
1.2. 
Engraving 
from 
the 
Theatrum 
Europaeum
showing 
how 
the 
Great 
Elector 
led 
his 
forces 
into 
the 
Duchy 
of 
Prussia 
in 
1679, 
surprising 
the 
Swedish 
army 
encamped 
there. 
Source
: 
Anon., 
Theatri 
Europaei 
Eilffter 
Theil 
Oder: 
Außführlich 
fortgefßhrte 
Friedens 
und 
KriegsBeschreibung
[…] 
(Frankfurt/Main, 
1682), 
1466. 
Collection 
of 
the 
author.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title
  3. Copyright
  4. Dedication
  5. CONTENTS
  6. Acknowledgements
  7. Introduction
  8. CHAPTER 1 The History Machine
  9. CHAPTER 2 The Historian King
  10. CHAPTER 3 Boatman on the River of Time
  11. CHAPTER 4 Time of the Nazis
  12. Conclusion and Epilogue
  13. Notes
  14. Index

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