A Companion to German Pietism offers an introduction to recent Pietism scholarship on both sides of the Atlantic, in German, Dutch, and English. The focus is upon early modern German Pietism, a movement that arose in the late 17th century German Empire within both Reformed and Lutheran traditions. It introduced a new paradigm to German Protestantism that included personal renewal, new birth, women-dominated conventicles, and millennialism. The “Introduction” offers a concise overview of modern research into German Pietism. The Companion is then organized according to the different worlds of Pietist existence—intellectual, devotional, literary-cultural, and social-political.

This book focuses on the national conceptualization of Judaism and Jews by German neo-Pietists from the early Restoration (1815) until the New Era (neue Ära, 1858-1861), at which point Prussia and other German states embarked on a liberal course. The book demonstrates how a certain understanding of nationalism by Awakened Christians, who were associated with political conservatism, was applied to themselves as belonging to a German nation, and correspondingly to Jews as members of a distinct Jewish nation. It argues that this kind of nationalization by neo-Pietists–among them theologians, intellectuals, and members of the agrarian aristocracy–was interwoven with their religion of the heart, and drew on a tradition of a community of kinship established by the earlier German Pietism since the late seventeenth century. The book sheds new light on the accommodation of nationalism by German Pietist conservatives, who so far were considered as opponents of the national idea. At the same time, it shows that their posture towards Jews was not merely anti-Semitic. It emerged from a specific religious-national synthesis, and aimed at an alternative solution to the Jewish Question, other than emancipation, in the form of Jewish national political independence.

Nationalism was a driving, moving spirit in the nineteenth-century Germany of Friedrich Schleiermacher. Jerry F. Dawson, through his thoughtful and well-wrought study of Friedrich Schleiermacher, provides an insight into contemporary nationalistic movements and the people who have a part in them. Schleiermacher, a prominent theologian and educator, was also a leading contributor to the tide of nationalism which swept Germany during the Napoleonic era. Dawson does not present Schleiermacher as an archetype for nationalists, but rather as an example of one man who was willing to sacrifice everything for the good of the nation. Examining the influence of Pietism, rationalism, and romanticism on Schleiermacher, the author explains the origins of his subject's nationalistic activities and traces the evolution of his patriotic point of view. Dawson depicts the development of Schleiermacher's patriotism from Prussian particularism to German nationalism—an allegiance to an idealized Germany unified in religion, language, folkways. He describes the diverse approaches utilized by Schleiermacher to achieve a patriotic awakening among his countrymen: "...he preached nationalistic sermons; he delivered scholarly lectures; he repeatedly risked his life on dangerous missions which would help free Germany from France; he used his journalistic talents to try to stimulate the national consciousness of the German people; and he even served in the government of Prussia in an attempt to reconstruct the educational system so that nationalism might be advanced."

The author's primary purpose is to describe the precise nature of American Lutheran Pietism and to discern its proper place in the history of Lutheranism. The book examines leaders like Philip Spencer, August Franke, and Samuel Simon Schmucker. The author also explores the complexities of whether the Lutheran Church in antebellum America would support antislavery positions like gradual emancipation or the immediacy of abolition.

The arduous path from the colourful diversity of the Holy Roman Empire to the Prussian-dominated German nation-state, Bismarck's German Empire of 1871, led through revolutions, wars and economic upheavals, but also through the cultural splendour of German Classicism and Romanticism. Hagen Schulze takes a fresh look at late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German history, explaining it as the interaction of revolutionary forces from below and from above, of economics, politics, and culture. None of the results were predetermined, and yet their outcome was of momentous significance for all of Europe, if not the world.

A series of essays on the development of medicine in the century of the Enlightenment, illustrating the decline in the role of religion in medical thinking, and the increased use of reason.

This book presents a fresh historical and theoretical analysis of religion and politics in early modern Europe.

Currently part of Poland, the city of Poznan straddled an ethnic border zone of sorts prior to World War II, on the edge of a predominantly German sphere of settlement to the west and a predominantly Polish sphere to the east. This juxtaposition of cultures helped stimulate the development of vigorous nationalist movements in the first half of the nineteenth century, and Poznan emerged as an important center of such activity among Germans and Poles alike. Robert E. Alvis tracks the rise of nationalism in Poznan and examines how religious affiliation factored into the process. Drawing upon a wealth of archival data, including memoirs, police and government correspondence, and parish and archdiocesan records, the author reconstructs evolving patterns of collective identity during a time of rapid socioeconomic change and political, religious, and cultural ferment. He concludes that in Poznan, religion provided critical foundations for the development of Polish and German nationalist movements and enhanced their appeal across a broad demographic spectrum. This book encourages a rethinking of the widely held view that early European nationalism was largely a secular phenomenon at odds with religion.