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Nietzsche's "Ecce Homo", 2021

Friedrich Nietzsche’s intellectual autobiography *Ecce Homo* has always been a controversial book... more Friedrich Nietzsche’s intellectual autobiography *Ecce Homo* has always been a controversial book. Nietzsche prepared it for publication just before he became incurably insane in early 1889, but it was held back until after his death, and finally appeared in 1908.

For much of the first century of its reception, *Ecce Homo* met with a sceptical response. It was viewed primarily as evidence of its author’s incipient madness. This was hardly surprising, since Nietzsche is deliberately outrageous with the "megalomaniacal" self-advertisement of his chapter titles. Notoriously, Nietzsche also exclaims "Ich bin kein Mensch, ich bin Dynamit" ("I am not a man, I am dynamite"), as he attempts to explode one misconception after another in the Western philosophical tradition.

In recent decades there has been increased interest in Nietzsche's *Ecce Homo*, especially in the English-speaking world, but the present volume is the first collection of essays in any language devoted to the work.

Contributors include established and emerging Nietzsche scholars from the UK and the USA, as well as from Germany, France, Portugal, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Philosophische Rundschau, 2022

Rezension (Christian Niemeyer) - Nicholas Martin/Duncan Large (Hrsg.): Nietzsche's »Ecce homo«

Focusing on three of the defining moments of the twentieth century – the end of the two World War... more Focusing on three of the defining moments of the twentieth century – the end of the two World Wars and the collapse of the Iron Curtain – this volume presents a rich collection of authoritative essays, covering a wide range of thematic, regional, temporal and methodological perspectives.

By re-examining the traumatic legacies of the century’s three major conflicts, the volume illuminates a number of recurrent yet differentiated ideas concerning memorialisation, mythologisation, mobilisation, commemoration and confrontation, reconstruction and representation in the aftermath of conflict. The post-conflict relationship between the living and the dead, the contestation of memories and legacies of war in cultural and political discourses, and the significance of generations are key threads binding the collection together.

While not claiming to be the definitive study of so vast a subject, the collection nevertheless presents a series of enlightening historical and cultural perspectives from leading scholars in the field, and it pushes back the boundaries of the burgeoning field of the study of legacies and memories of war. Bringing together historians, literary scholars, political scientists and cultural studies experts to discuss the legacies and memories of war in Europe (1918–1945–1989), the collection makes an important contribution to the ongoing interdisciplinary conversation regarding the interwoven legacies of twentieth-century Europe’s three major conflicts.

The works of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) -- an innovative and resonant tragedian and an import... more The works of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) -- an innovative and resonant tragedian and an important poet, essayist, historian, and aesthetic theorist -- are among the best known of German and world literature. Schiller's explosive original artistry and feel for timely and enduring personal tragedy embedded in timeless sociohistorical conflicts remain the topic of lively academic debate. The essays in this volume address the many flashpoints and canonical shifts in the cyclically polarized reception of Schiller and his works, in pursuit of historical and contemporary answers to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's expression of frightened admiration in 1794: "Who is this Schiller?" The responses demonstrate pronounced shifts from widespread twentieth-century understandings of Schiller: the overwhelming emphasis here is on Schiller the cosmopolitan realist, and little or no trace is left of the ultimately untenable view of Schiller as an abstract idealist who turned his back on politics.

Contributors: Ehrhard Bahr, Matthew Bell, Frederick Burwick, Jennifer Driscoll Colosimo, Bernd Fischer, Gail K. Hart, Fritz Heuer, Hans H. Hiebel, Jeffrey L. High, Walter Hinderer, Paul E. Kerry, Erik B. Knoedler, Elisabeth Krimmer, Maria del Rosario Acosta López, Laura Anna Macor, Dennis F. Mahoney, Nicholas Martin, John A. McCarthy, Yvonne Nilges, Norbert Oellers, Peter Pabisch, David Pugh, T. J. Reed, Wolfgang Riedel, Jörg Robert, Ritchie Robertson, Jeffrey L. Sammons, Henrik Sponsel.

Jeffrey L. High is Associate Professor of German Studies at California State University Long Beach, Nicholas Martin is Reader in European Intellectual History at the University of Birmingham, and Norbert Oellers is Professor Emeritus of German Literature at the University of Bonn.

Reviews
[D]emands attention not least for the great variety of approaches chosen by its well-qualified contributors, all of whom share the common aim of liberating Schiller from his traditional role as the junior member of the Weimar partnership. . . . [T]he bulk of the constituent material gives us a Schiller still vibrantly alive -- now, and in the foreseeable future. --Osman Durrani, MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW

[A]n indispensable introduction to Schiller scholarship: it presents historicized research covering a broad range of Schiller's legacy, is extensively resourced, and demonstrates considerable self-reflexivity regarding international Germanistik. GOETHE YEARBOOK

[A] rich, varied, and rewarding volume of scholarship. . . . [B]oth specialists and more casual readers of Schiller's works, and indeed those readers with an interest in the history of ideas, stand to benefit from a sustained reading of the learned meditations contained within it. FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES

[T]he premise of the book's conception [is] fully to be accepted, and finds realization in a number of important contributions that broaden and deepen our knowledge about Schiller's illusionless realism, his understanding of politics, his philosophical position, his critique of religion, and his skeptical treatment of historical experience in his poetic and theoretical works. GERMANISTIK

Divided into five parts covering drama and poetry, aesthetics and philosophy, history and politics, reception and "Schiller Now", the essays reveal Schiller as a dramatist of melancholy, a "poet of Mourning", and an Enlightenment historian, to mention just three of the wide variety of perspectives offered . . . [a] useful contemporary collection. Recommended. CHOICE

[P]ositions itself - rightly - over and against the mid-century creation of a politically naïve, if not dangerous, Schiller, who cartoonishly embodied the backlash within Anglo-American circles against German politics and German idealism. . . . [T]his collection is a conscious effort not only to avoid reducing Schiller to any of his readily identifiable personae, but also to interrogate the twentieth-century scholarly trends that have made this reduction something that must be avoided. GERMAN QUARTERLY

“…a worthy memorial to the author…” Modern Language Review, Vol. 102, 2007, 1177-78 “…[ein] ... more “…a worthy memorial to the author…”
Modern Language Review, Vol. 102, 2007, 1177-78

“…[ein] sehr lesenswerte[r] Tagungsband…”
literaturkritik.de , No.1, January 2007

“This is an important book.”
Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol.43, 2007, 193-94

“The volume is beautifully edited and printed. [...] it is a welcome addition to other publications celebrating the Schiller bicentenary. It contains contributions that will be cited for years to come.”
German Quarterly, Vol.80, 2007, 254-56

To mark the 200th anniversary of Schiller’s death, leading scholars from Germany, Canada, the UK and the USA have contributed to this volume of commemorative essays. These were first presented at a symposium held at the University of Birmingham in June 2005. The essays collected here shed important new light on Schiller’s standing as a national and transnational figure , both in his own lifetime and in the two hundred years since his death. Issues explored include: aspects of Schiller’s life and work which contributed to the creation of heroic and nationalist myths of the poet during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; his activities as man of the theatre and publisher in his own, pre-national context; the (trans-)national dimensions of Schiller’s poetic and dramatic achievement in their contemporary context and with reference to later appropriations of national(ist) elements in his work. The contributions to this volume illuminate Schiller’s achievements as poet, playwright, thinker and historian, and bring acute insights to bear on both the history of his impact in a variety of contexts and his enduring importance as a point of cultural reference.
Inhalt/Contents
Nicholas MARTIN: Introduction: Schiller After Two Centuries
T. J. REED: Wie hat Schiller überlebt?
Lesley SHARPE: A National Repertoire: Schiller and the Theatre of his Day
Norbert OELLERS: Schiller, der “Heros”. Mit ergänzenden Bemerkungen zu einigen seiner Dramen-Helden
Jochen GOLZ: Monumente zu Lebzeiten? – Schiller als Herausgeber seiner Werke
K. F. HILLIARD: “Nicht in Person sondern durch einen Repräsentanten”: Problematik der Repräsentation bei Schiller
David HILL: Lenz and Schiller: All’s well that ends well
Steffan DAVIES: Schiller’s Egmont and the Beginnings of Weimar Classicism
John GUTHRIE: Language and Gesture in Schiller’s Later Plays
Francis LAMPORT: Virgins, Bastards and Saviours of the Nation: Reflections on Schiller’s Historical Drama
Ritchie ROBERTSON: Schiller and the Jesuits
Alexander KOŠENINA: Schiller’s Poetics of Crime
Jeffrey L. HIGH: Schiller, “merely political Revolutions”, the personal Drama of Occupation, and Wars of Liberation
Maike OERGEL: The German Identity, the German Querelle and the Ideal State: A Fresh Look at Schiller’s Fragment “Deutsche Größe”
David PUGH: Schiller and the Crisis of German Liberalism
Nicholas MARTIN: Images of Schiller in National Socialist Germany
Paul BISHOP: The “Schillerbild” of Werner Deubel: Schiller as “Poet of the Nation”?
Anhang/Appendix: Schillerjahr 2005. Selected Events and Publications
Personenregister/Index of Names
Register der Werke Schillers/Index of Schiller’s Works

http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/2.toc

The essays collected in this volume are selected papers from the 7th Annual Conference of the Fri... more The essays collected in this volume are selected papers from the 7th Annual Conference of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, which was held at the University of St Andrews in September 1997. The three distinct but related issues examined in this book are centrally important to the search for Nietzsche’s intellectual and cultural roots. The first concerns Nietzsche’s attitudes to his German cultural tradition, the second is Nietzsche’s view of his German present, and the final issue is the extent to which dealing with Nietzsche and his legacies has itself become a tradition since his death in 1900. Implicitly or explicitly, the contributors reveal Nietzsche’s ambivalent, double-edged attitude to tradition. All the essays collected here take account of the latest developments in Nietzsche scholarship and, together, make an important contribution both to understanding the ways in which Nietzsche problematises tradition and to recognising the difficulties, and opportunities, arising from the Nietzschean tradition(s) of the last hundred years.

Contents:
Daniel W. Conway: Nietzsche’s Germano-mania
Thomas H. Brobjer: Nietzsche as German Philosopher: His Reading of the Classical German Philosophers
Christa Davis Acampora: ‘The Contest Between Nietzsche and Homer’: Revaluing the Homeric Question
Duncan Large: ‘Der Bauernaufstand des Geistes’: Nietzsche, Luther and the Reformation
Ben Morgan: Fear and Self-Control in The Antichrist: Nietzsche’s Prussian Past
Christopher Janaway: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche’s Educator
Hans-Gerd von Seggern: Nietzsches (anti-)naturalistische Ästhetik in der Geburt der Tragödie
Paul J. M. van Tongeren: Nietzsche’s Naturalism
Jim Urpeth: Nietzsche and the Rapture of Aesthetic Disinterestedness: A Response to Heidegger
Gerd Schank: Race and Breeding in Nietzsche’s Philosophy
Malcolm Humble: Heinrich Mann and Arnold Zweig: Left-Wing Nietzscheans?
Nicholas Martin: Nietzsche in the GDR: History of a Taboo.

Nietzsche's "Die Geburt der Tragodie" and Schiller's "Ästhetische Briefe" are two texts which mak... more Nietzsche's "Die Geburt der Tragodie" and Schiller's "Ästhetische Briefe" are two texts which make a vital contribution to the history of aesthetic and cultural theory. This is the first work to make a comparative study of the texts, bringing a mutually illuminating perspective to bear on them.

Dr Martin counters the widespread belief that Nietzsche and Schiller represent a black-and-white contrast, showing the wide extent of the early Nietzsche's debt to Schiller's aesthetics, and drawing a convincing picture of the common aesthetic ground shared by the two writers. The four key aspects of their aesthetic theories are compared: the brilliant diagnoses of cultural crisis; the historical framework of each theory; the catalytic function of the Greek experience in both theories; and the metaphysical and psychological underpinnings by which the theories stand or fall. At the heart of the study lie the claims of both Nietzsche and Schiller for the `untimeliness' of their texts. Dr Martin concludes that, whatever the shortcomings of the texts, they remain outstanding and enduringly relevant contributions both to aesthetic theory and to our understanding of what it is to be human.

D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1993

The thesis is two-fold. First, that Nietzsche's early writings owe more to Schiller than he subse... more The thesis is two-fold. First, that Nietzsche's early writings owe more to Schiller than he subsequently wished to admit. This is demonstrated by evidence from Die Geburt der Tragödie and the Nachlass notes of the same period. Second, that there are tangible parallels of content and intent between Schiller's Ästhetische Briefe and Nietzsche's Die Geburt der Tragödie.

The thesis is not an 'influence study', although the issue is addressed. By examining his hitherto neglected attitude to Schiller, this study sheds light on Nietzsche's tactics when dealing with men and their ideas in his writings. This, however, is not the main point of the thesis, which is to analyse the connections between the two texts. The essential point of comparison is that Die Geburt der Tragödie and the Ästhetische Briefe both set out aesthetic prescriptions for a diseased culture. Certain kinds of art are deemed capable, by virtue of their timeless and incorruptible properties, of reforming the human psyche, and by extension of promoting cultural integrity and vitality.

After analysing Nietzsche's attitude to Schiller, particularly in connection with the argument of Die Geburt der Tragödie, the thesis compares the strategies adopted in the two texts: both present triadic schemes of historical development, in which the Greek experience is regarded as crucial; their aesthetic 'reform programmes' are predicated on psycho-metaphysical pictures of human nature; and both texts reject attempts to cure human ills by political means. The thesis is an attempt to articulate, compare, and criticise the respective projects and to see in what sense(s) they were untimely. Both projects were untimely, in the sense that they were deliberately out of step with their times. In each case, the alleged remedial properties of art themselves are characterised as untimely. They are borrowed from another time, or are said to be out of time altogether.

The thesis concludes that the two texts, although outstanding contributions to aesthetic theory, were inappropriate (untimely) attempts to tackle larger problems.

Articles by Nick Martin

*Pacifist and Anti-Militarist Writing in German, 1889–1928: From Bertha von Suttner to Erich Maria Remarque*, ed. by Andreas Kramer and Ritchie Robertson, London German Studies XVI (Munich: IUDICIUM Verlag, 2018), pp. 292–303. [OPEN ACCESS], 2018

By considering the broader political context of writing about the First World War a decade after ... more By considering the broader political context of writing about the First World War a decade after Germany’s defeat in that conflict, this essay illustrates the beleaguered position in which German pacifist and/or anti-war writers found themselves by the late 1920s, and suggests reasons why they ultimately lost the battle for control of German memory of the Great War.

Times Literary Supplement, 1994

Prompted by the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of WW1, the article examines how and why Nietzsc... more Prompted by the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of WW1, the article examines how and why Nietzsche became a focus for the expression of anti-German sentiment in writings by British opinion-formers and propagandists during the First World War.

http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/2/187.full.pdf+html

Nicholas Martin (ed.), Schiller: National Poet - Poet of Nations. A Birmingham Symposium (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 275–99.

The essay analyses attitudes to Schiller in Germany between 1933 and 1945 in order to establish t... more The essay analyses attitudes to Schiller in Germany between 1933 and 1945 in order to establish to what extent his character and work, however interpreted, provided a rallying-point for endorsers of the National Socialist regime as well as for some of its opponents. The nature of these attitudes is investigated, together with the related question of Schiller's political and ideological malleability. Analysis of engagements with Schiller in this period reveals that there was no single, monolithic National Socialist "Schillerbild". While Nazi treatments of Schiller were manipulative in the extreme and drew heavily on existing myths surrounding the poet, they were anything but consistent or uniform.

http://www.camden-house.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=13546

Modern Language Review, 2003

The article analyses how Nietzsche's name became a focus for the expression of anti-German sentim... more The article analyses how Nietzsche's name became a focus for the expression of anti-German sentiment in writings by British opinion-formers and propagandists during the First World War. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary sources, the article counters the view that Nietzsche’s impact on British public opinion in 1914 was negligible. It is argued that the singular view of Nietzsche which emerged in Britain at this time was due not only to the demands of wartime propaganda but also to the malleability of Nietzsche's texts. The article considers the irony of this exploitation, given Nietzsche’s hostility to nationalism and 'German-ness'.

*Germany and the Imagined East*, ed. by Lee M. Roberts. London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2004

Nowhere in his writings does Nietzsche discuss Russia or Russians systematically; his remarks on ... more Nowhere in his writings does Nietzsche discuss Russia or Russians systematically; his remarks on them are scattered and diffuse. As both geographical reality and cultural construct, Russia is not as central to Nietzsche’s outlook as ancient Greece, for example, or Rome, or Judaea. Russia nevertheless plays an important ancillary role in Nietzsche's diagnosis of contemporary Europe and its ills. Russia or, rather, what Nietzsche imagines Russia to be, offers important clues, he believes, to overcoming the malaise of nineteenth-century Europe. Nietzsche saw in Russia an antidote or alternative to what he perceived as the febrile decadence of Western Europe in general, and Germany in particular.

Nietzsche and the German Tradition, 2003

This essay examines cultural attitudes to Nietzsche in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), whic... more This essay examines cultural attitudes to Nietzsche in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which appeared to be changing in the mid- to late 1980s, after almost forty years of deliberate, officially sanctioned neglect of the thinker.
Nietzsche's voice had been effectively silenced in the GDR and his manuscripts carefully guarded. While it was not impossible to gain access to Nietzsche's manuscripts, scholars had to tackle a bureaucratic assault course in order to reach them. Reception of Nietzsche in the GDR tended to be limited and negative. There was nothing even resembling an open discussion in the GDR of Nietzsche and his legacies before 1986, and the first Nietzsche monograph to be published there did not appear until 1989. Discussions of Nietzsche in the GDR were rare, and they tended to focus only on his alleged role in paving the way for National Socialism and/or bourgeois imperialism.
The depth and intensity of official hostility to Nietzsche in the GDR can be traced, in part, to the founding ideas and self-understanding of that state. Its claims to legitimacy were based on two closely related ideas. The first was a Marxist-Leninist interpretation of historical development, according to which the GDR was the culmination of progressive ('zukunftsweisend') developments in German history. The second was the antifascist struggle of 1933-1945, which provided the GDR with its immediate raison d’être. The presence of the victorious Red Army on German soil, the sacrifices of the Soviet people in repelling the fascist invader, and the martyrdom of German antifascists in the Third Reich appeared to provide compelling evidence for both these claims to legitimacy. There was no room for Nietzsche in the ‘first antifascist state on German soil’, as his writings were perceived (and not only by communists) to have been an important underpinning of National Socialism.
A debate in 1986-87 in the GDR journal *Sinn und Form* on opening up Nietzsche's work to public debate seemed to be part of a cultural thaw in East Germany. This debate in the GDR was a curiously muted and oblique version of a process which, by 1987, was already well underway in Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union: glasnost. In the event, in the GDR context it was too little, too late.

Publications of the English Goethe Society, 2008

This article re-evaluates Nietzsche's view of Goethe by analyzing the function and significance o... more This article re-evaluates Nietzsche's view of Goethe by analyzing the function and significance of the term "Goethe" in Nietzsche’s writings. While Nietzsche's attitude to Goethe is indisputably complex, it is argued here that the image of Goethe presented in Nietzsche's writings is the exception which proves the rule that his engagements with historical figures are characterized by deliberate ambivalence and/or violent shifts in attitude. While Nietzsche's view of Goethe is not wholly uncritical, the ambivalence which characterizes Nietzsche's intellectual (and emotional) encounters with other outstanding figures in Western culture is largely absent from his engagement with Goethe. Throughout Nietzsche's writings, Goethe is associated in invariably positive ways with diagnoses of cultural health and sickness, notably with Nietzsche's assessments of Greek antiquity, "Erziehung", Classicism and Romanticism, Christianity, Wagner, decadence, the "German question", Napoleon, "Lebensbejahung", and the symbolic figure of Dionysus. Increasingly and obsessively, however, Goethe comes to be linked in Nietzsche's mind with exemplary physical and mental health, to the extent that he presents Goethe as both a promise of the posited "Übermensch" and as an idealized self-projection or self-affirmation.

German Life and Letters, 2008

The article traces the development of Friedrich Nietzsche's attitude to Enlightenment and challen... more The article traces the development of Friedrich Nietzsche's attitude to Enlightenment and challenges the view that he can be dismissed, or revered, as an anti-Enlightenment irrationalist.
While Nietzsche rejects certain elements of Enlightenment thought, particularly those which found expression in the practice of the French Revolution, his philosophical diagnoses are informed to an extent by the critical principles of Enlightenment. Nietzsche admires the critical spirit of certain figures associated with eighteenth-century Enlightenment, notably Voltaire and Lessing, as well as representatives of earlier 'Enlightenments', such as Epicurus, Petrarch and Erasmus. He is also impressed by the audacity of the Enlightenment project, however flawed parts of it may be, and by the scale of its philosophical legacy.
However, Nietzsche's approach to Enlightenment remains ambivalent and selective. His sceptical diagnoses of the phenomenon anticipate Horkheimer and Adorno's critique in Dialektik der Aufklärung (1944). The article concludes that it is, paradoxically, Nietzsche's attempts to suggest ways forward for humanity that present the most significant obstacles to viewing him as an enlightened thinker.
The research for this article was made possible by a generous grant from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung.

Nietzsche's "Ecce Homo", 2021

Contributors include established and emerging Nietzsche scholars from the UK and the USA, as well as from Germany, France, Portugal, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Philosophische Rundschau, 2022

Rezension (Christian Niemeyer) - Nicholas Martin/Duncan Large (Hrsg.): Nietzsche's »Ecce homo«

“…[ein] sehr lesenswerte[r] Tagungsband…”
literaturkritik.de , No.1, January 2007

“This is an important book.”
Forum for Modern Language Studies, Vol.43, 2007, 193-94

http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/2.toc

D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1993

The thesis concludes that the two texts, although outstanding contributions to aesthetic theory, were inappropriate (untimely) attempts to tackle larger problems.

Times Literary Supplement, 1994

http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/2/187.full.pdf+html

Nicholas Martin (ed.), Schiller: National Poet - Poet of Nations. A Birmingham Symposium (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 275–99.

http://www.camden-house.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=13546

Modern Language Review, 2003

*Germany and the Imagined East*, ed. by Lee M. Roberts. London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2004

Nietzsche and the German Tradition, 2003

Publications of the English Goethe Society, 2008

German Life and Letters, 2008

Paul Bishop (ed.), Nietzsche and Antiquity: His Reaction and Response to the Classical Tradition (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004), pp. 40-53.

In view of later bastardisations of Nietzsche's thought, the most damaging of which were carried ... more In view of later bastardisations of Nietzsche's thought, the most damaging of which were carried out by Nazis, it is important to establish where his theory of cultural development, in so far as it relies on a racial theory, stands in relation to racial(ist) theories in late nineteenth-century Europe. The most influential of these was Gobineau's. Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau, who has been dubbed the "Father of Racism", lived from 1816 to 1882 and was therefore an almost exact contemporary of Richard Wagner's. This essay seeks to answer a number of questions about Nietzsche and race. Was Nietzsche influenced by Gobineau's theory of race? Is Nietzsche in any way responsible for perpetuating it? Should Nietzsche’s name be mentioned in the same breath as the propagators of biological racism? Was Nietzsche a racist in the sense that we now understand the term? I argue that he was not, but that Nietzsche's theory of cultural development is no less problematic for that. It entails ethical, social and political consequences as unpalatable as any arguments based on race.

Ecce Opus. Nietzsche-Revisionen im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. by Rüdiger Görner and Duncan Large (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), pp. 25–35. ISBN 3-525-20830-8, 2003

However much emphasis may be laid by his admirers, and his critics, on the challenges posed by Ni... more However much emphasis may be laid by his admirers, and his critics, on the challenges posed by Nietzsche's thought, the eccentricities of his 'outsider' status, and his anti-academic animus, he has long since been incorporated into the conventional academic discourse of journals, conferences and the like. Anniversary gatherings such as this one in the year 2000 tend to underline the point.
Thanks in no small measure to the determined efforts of, among others, Walter Kaufmann to rehabilitate or even tame Nietzsche after the Second World War (after the squalid treatment his work had suffered at the hands of his sister and from the likes of Baeumler, Rosenberg and other Nazis), Nietzsche would now appear to be one of us, "jenseits von Verteufelung und Verharmlosung".
This essay looks beyond and behind this rather complacent contemporary image of Nietzsche to re-examine some of his less palatable remarks – on the nature and, to Nietzsche, the desirability of "barbarism" as a counterweight and corrective to "civilisation".
It is argued here that Nietzsche presents a grand aesthetic vision of the future, and that violence, both figurative and literal, is an integral part of that vision.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0483.1995.tb01650.x/abstract

Nicholas Martin (ed.), Schiller: National Poet - Poet of Nations. A Birmingham Symposium (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006), pp. 7-21

This essay is the Introduction to a volume of contributions specially commissioned to mark the 20... more This essay is the Introduction to a volume of contributions specially commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary in 2005 of the death of Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805): *Schiller: National Poet - Poet of Nations. A Birmingham Symposium*, ed. by Nicholas Martin (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006).
The essays assembled in this collection, by leading Schiller scholars from Germany, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.A., shed significant new light on debates surrounding Schiller's status as a national or transnational figure, both in his own lifetime and in the two hundred years since his death.
Anniversaries of Schiller's birth or death have usually been celebrated at fifty-year intervals. The “Schiller Year” (Schillerjahr) of 2005 was the eighth such anniversary year, after 1855, 1859, 1905, 1909, 1934, 1955 and 1959. The major “Schiller Years” of the past 150 years present not only a picture of the vicissitudes of the poet's fame but also revealing snapshots of German intellectual, political and popular culture.
This introductory essay surveys earlier “Schillerjahre” as background to an analysis of commemorative events and trends during the “Schillerjahr 2005”. It concludes that 2005 witnessed a resurgence of interest in Germany, and to a lesser extent elsewhere, in Schiller as a master dramatist and entertainer, a development to which only either the dyed-in-the-wool “Schiller hater” or the blinkered admirer of Schiller’s highbrow qualities could object.

in Jeffrey L. High (ed.), Schiller’s Literary Prose Works: New Translations and Critical Essays (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008), pp. 188–201., 2008

Schiller’s career as a writer of prose fiction was short-lived. It lasted only seven years, from ... more Schiller’s career as a writer of prose fiction was short-lived. It lasted only seven years, from 1782 (when he was twenty-two years of age) until 1789. Schiller's short stories of this period have begun to attract significant critical attention in recent years. However, even the texts that are today considered to be Schiller’s major prose-writing achievements of the 1780s, notably "Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre" (1786) and “Der Geisterseher” (1786–89), remain to a large extent overshadowed by his simultaneous achievements as a dramatist and lyric poet. The overshadowing of Schiller’s prose writing by his dramas is truer still in the case of Schiller’s shortest short stories, which are the focus of this essay. Following an analysis of these very short short stories, the essay concludes that, whatever Schiller's motives for abandoning prose fiction writing after 1789, the consequence of this abandonment was that Germany lost perhaps her first great modern novelist—and acquired her foremost modern dramatist.

Nigel Harris and Joanne Sayner (eds), The Text and Its Context: Studies in Modern German Literature and Society Presented to Ronald Speirs on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Oxford and Berne: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 165-176, 2008

This essay examines the apparent tension between political and psychological readings of Thomas M... more This essay examines the apparent tension between political and psychological readings of Thomas Mann’s novella 'Mario und der Zauberer' (1930).
Political interpretations of the text often see in the magician Cipolla little more than a thinly disguised Mussolini-figure, and interpret the novella as a veiled warning or prophecy of the dangers of fascism.
Psychological readings have tended to focus on the text’s allegorical portrayal of the mind-games and performance wizardry employed by fascist demagogues.
Thomas Mann himself was dismayed by exclusively political interpretations of the story, which in his view tended to exaggerate the theme of the hypnotic attraction of political extremism, at the expense of the novella's aesthetic qualities. He also became increasingly convinced that the text had revealed the manifest ill-preparedness and inability of intellectuals, including himself, to combat the rise of fascism in interwar Europe.

http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/content/50/2/135.full.pdf+html

History, Memory and Heritage in Global Perspective. Royal Military College of Canada Symposium. K... more History, Memory and Heritage in Global Perspective. Royal Military College of Canada Symposium. Kingston, Ontario. September 2024

The paper addresses contemporary cultural perspectives on the Prussian-led political unification ... more The paper addresses contemporary cultural perspectives on the Prussian-led political unification of Germany in 1871. The shrill jingoism that accompanied the victory of German (or Prussian) arms concealed deep misgivings among many cultural figures and intellectuals in Germany concerning the widespread mood of misplaced triumphalism surrounding German unification. Chief among these cultural figures, at least in hindsight, was the young Friedrich Nietzsche, who had himself participated briefly in the military campaign against France.
In an essay of 1873, the 28-year-old Nietzsche argued that Germany’s military victory had nothing to do with cultural superiority – only with technical proficiency – and that a unified German culture simply did not exist, despite protestations to the contrary by writers of popular German prose, verse and song. Nietzsche concluded that it was delusional and dangerous to believe that Germany’s military victory over France also represented a cultural triumph.
The paper seeks to situate Nietzsche’s diatribe within his own consistent, culturally motivated hostility to the Wilhelmine Reich and to determine its place within broader cultural currents in Germany in the aftermath of unification that were hostile to widespread feelings of complacency and arrogant nationalism.

Slides that accompanied my presentation at the IGS-DAAD Research Project workshop "Global Germany... more Slides that accompanied my presentation at the IGS-DAAD Research Project workshop "Global Germany?" at the Institute for German Studies, University of Birmingham, 16 December 2019.

Slides that accompanied a public lecture I delivered at the National Memorial Arboretum, UK on 27... more Slides that accompanied a public lecture I delivered at the National Memorial Arboretum, UK on 27th July 2019 to mark the centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

Slides that accompanied my paper on 14th March 2018 at “1968 and All That: Legacies of a Revoluti... more Slides that accompanied my paper on 14th March 2018 at “1968 and All That: Legacies of a Revolution”, an Institute for German Studies symposium, University of Birmingham.

Slides that accompanied an invited lecture I delivered to the English Goethe Society at the Germa... more Slides that accompanied an invited lecture I delivered to the English Goethe Society at the German Historical Institute London on 25th January 2018.

Invited paper presented at the symposium, "Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945): A Life in Text and Image",... more Invited paper presented at the symposium, "Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945): A Life in Text and Image", at the IKON Gallery, Birmingham, October 2017.

Taking Käthe Kollwitz's sculpture "Trauerndes Elternpaar" [Grieving Parents, 1931-32] as its principal focus and illustration, this paper attempts to trace the personal impact of the First World War on Kollwitz – her son, Peter, was eighteen when he was killed at the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914 – as well as broader aesthetic and political repercussions of the conflict, as these are interpreted and expressed in Kollwitz's art and writing.
The idea for the “Grieving Parents” sculpture, which is now located at the German Military Cemetery in Vladslo in Flanders, first formed in Kollwitz's mind shortly after her son's death in 1914, yet it took eighteen years to be realised.
By means of an analysis of Kollwitz’s diary during this long gestation period, the paper seeks to outline the place and significance of the Great War in Kollwitz's development as an artist, writer and human being.

Paper presented at an international conference - Pacifist and Anti‐Militarist Writing in German, ... more Paper presented at an international conference - Pacifist and Anti‐Militarist Writing in German, 1889–1929: From Bertha von Suttner to Erich Maria Remarque - at the Institute for Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, September 2016

The slides that accompanied an invited lecture I gave at the Royal Air Force Museum, London, in M... more The slides that accompanied an invited lecture I gave at the Royal Air Force Museum, London, in May 2016.

The lecture examines Manfred von Richthofen’s memoir "The Red Battle Flyer" (1918) and seeks to establish the part played by Richthofen himself in creating and promoting the myth of the invincible, ruthless yet gentlemanly "Red Baron".

Richthofen’s presentation of his theory and practice of aerial combat, his thoughts on the meaning of heroism and sacrifice, and his view of the role of air power on the Western Front are outlined and discussed.

I also briefly compare "The Red Battle Flyer" to other 'aerial' memoirs of WW1 and trace the 'afterlife' of the Red Baron, both during the Nazi period and in contemporary popular culture