A comprehensive study of German materialism in the second half of the nineteenth century is long overdue. Among contemporary historians the mere passing references to Karl Vogt, Jacob Moleschott, and Ludwig Buchner as materialists and popularizers of science are hardly sufficient, for few individuals influenced public opinion in nineteenth-century Germany more than these men. Buchner, for example, revealed his awareness of the historical significance of his Kraft und Stoff in comments made in 1872, just seventeen years after its original appearance. A philosophical book which has undergone twelve big German editions in the short span of seventeen years, which further has been issued in non-German countries and languages about fifteen to sixteen times in the same period, and whose appearance (although its author was entirely unknown up to then) has called forth an almost unprecedented storm in the press, . . . such a book can be nothing ordinary; the world-calling it enjoys at present must be justified through its wholly special characteristics or by the merits of its form and content. ' Vogt, Moleschott and Buchner explicitly held that their materialism was founded on natural science. But other materialists of the nineteenth century also laid claim to the scientific character of their own thought. It is likely that Marx and Engels would have permitted their brand of materialism to have been called scientific, provided, of course, that 'scientific' was understood in their dialectical meaning of the term. Socialism, Engels maintained, had become a science with Marx.

In the 19th Century, economic growth was accompanied by large-scale structural change, known as industrialization, which fundamentally affected western societies. Even though industrialization is on the wane in some advanced economies and we are experiencing substantial structural changes again, the causes and consequences of these changes are inextricably linked with earlier industrialization.This means that understanding 19th Century industrialization helps us understand problems of contemporary economic growth. There is no recent study on economic developments in 19th Century Germany. So this concise volume, written specifically with students of German and economic history in mind, will prove to be most valuable, not least because of its wealth of statistical data.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. We have represented this book in the same form as it was first published. Hence any marks seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

This book explores the culture, politics, and ideas of the nineteenth-century German secularist movements of Free Religion, Freethought, Ethical Culture, and Monism. In it, Todd H. Weir argues that although secularists challenged church establishment and conservative orthodoxy, they were subjected to the forces of religious competition.

Between 1780-1918, Germany underwent massive changes: politically, territorially, culturally, economically, and socially. In this book, an international team of scholars provides a comprehensive and accessible guide to the subject, organized along chronological lines. The result is an innovative work that blends the basic guidance of a textbook with fascinating historical analysis.

The nineteenth century witnessed the birth of German nationalism and the unification of Germany as a powerful nation-state. In this era the reading public?s obsession with the most destructive and divisive war in its history?the Thirty Years? War?resurrected old animosities and sparked a violent, century-long debate over the origins and aftermath of the war. The core of this bitter argument was a clash between Protestant and Catholic historians over the cultural criteria determining authentic German identity and the territorial and political form of the future German nation. ø This groundbreaking study of modern Germany?s morbid fascination with the war explores the ideological uses of history writing, commemoration, and collective remembrance to show how the passionate argument over the ?meaning? of the Thirty Years? War shaped Germans' conception of their nation. The first book in the extensive literature on German history writing to examine how modern German historians reinterpreted a specific event to define national identity and legitimate political and ideological agendas, The Thirty Years? War and German Memory in the Nineteenth Century is a bold intellectual history of the confluence of history writing, religion, culture, and politics in nineteenth-century Germany.

Liberalism is an attempt to both understand and change the world, an ideology and a movement, a set of ideas and a set of institutions. Liberal ideas began in Western Europe, but eventually spread throughout the world. This book examines liberal ideas and institutions in Germany from the end of the eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, German Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century provides a comprehensive picture of the movement on both the national and local levels. The book's central thesis is that the distinctive features of German liberalism must be understood in terms of the development of the German state and society.Sheehan argues that in the middle decades of the nineteenth century liberalism had the advantage of being the first political movement in Germany. It was able to mobilize and direct a broad variety of groups that wanted to change the status quo. After the formation of a united German nation state, however, liberals faced an increasingly dynamic and diverse set of opponents, who were better able to take advantage of the democratic suffrage introduced by Bismarck in 1867. Although liberals remained important in some states and many municipal governments, by 1914 they were pushed to the fringes of national politics. Sheehan concludes his account of liberalism's rise and fall with some reflections on the movement's place in German history and its significance for the disastrous collapse of democratic institutions in 1933.James J. Sheehan is Dickason Professor in the Humanities and Professor of History at Stanford University.

An exploration of the nature of identity in nineteenth-century Germany.

A biography of an important but largely forgotten nineteenth-century scientist whose work helped lay the foundation of modern neuroscience. Emil du Bois-Reymond is the most important forgotten intellectual of the nineteenth century. In his own time (1818–1896) du Bois-Reymond grew famous in his native Germany and beyond for his groundbreaking research in neuroscience and his provocative addresses on politics and culture. This biography by Gabriel Finkelstein draws on personal papers, published writings, and contemporary responses to tell the story of a major scientific figure. Du Bois-Reymond's discovery of the electrical transmission of nerve signals, his innovations in laboratory instrumentation, and his reductionist methodology all helped lay the foundations of modern neuroscience. In addition to describing the pioneering experiments that earned du Bois-Reymond a seat in the Prussian Academy of Sciences and a professorship at the University of Berlin, Finkelstein recounts du Bois-Reymond's family origins, private life, public service, and lasting influence. Du Bois-Reymond's public lectures made him a celebrity. In talks that touched on science, philosophy, history, and literature, he introduced Darwin to German students (triggering two days of debate in the Prussian parliament); asked, on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War, whether France had forfeited its right to exist; and proclaimed the mystery of consciousness, heralding the age of doubt. The first modern biography of du Bois-Reymond in any language, this book recovers an important chapter in the history of science, the history of ideas, and the history of Germany.

Anglo-German Scholarly Networks in the Long Nineteenth Century explores the complex and shifting connections between scientists and scholars in Britain and Germany from the late eighteenth century to the interwar years. Based on the concept of the transnational network in both its informal and institutional dimensions, it deals with the transfer of knowledge and ideas in a variety of fields and disciplines. Furthermore, it examines the role which mutual perceptions and stereotypes played in Anglo-German collaboration. By placing Anglo-German scholarly networks in a wider spatial and temporal context, the volume offers new frames of reference which challenge the long-standing focus on the antagonism and breakdown of relations before and during the First World War. Contributors include Rob Boddice, John Davis, Peter Hoeres, Hilary Howes, Gregor Pelger, Pascal Schillings, Angela Schwarz, Tara Windsor.