Poet's Reich

DAVID R. MIDGLEY is Emeritus Professor of German Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge.

• Introduction - Melissa S. Lane and Martin A. RuehlThe George Circle: From Künstlergesellschaft to Lebensgemeinschaft - Ute OelmannStefan George's Homoerotic Erlösungsreligion, 1891-1907 - Adam BisnoThe Secret Germany of Gertrud Kantorowicz - Robert LernerThe Poet as Idol: Friedrich Gundolf on Rilke and Poetic Leadership - Ruediger GoernerKingdom of the Spirit: The Secret Germany in Stefan George's Later Poems - Ray OckendenThe Absentee Prophet: Public Perceptions of George's Poetry in the Weimar Period - David MidgleyThe Platonic Politics of the George Circle: A Reconsideration - Melissa S. LanePolitical Economy as Geisteswissenschaft: Edgar Salin and Other Economists around George - Bertram Schefold"Imperium transcendat hominem": Reich and Rulership in Ernst Kantorowicz's Kaiser Friedrich der Zweite - Martin A. RuehlThird Reich and Third Europe: Stefan George's Imperial Mythologies in Context - Richard FaberFrom Secret Germany to Nazi Germany: The Politics of Art before and after 1933 - Robert E. NortonThe George Circle and National Socialism - Peter HoffmannStauffenberg: The Search for a Motive - Thomas KarlaufNotes on the ContributorsIndex

It is the enormous service of this collection to let . . . contradictory theses and argumentations have their effect on the reader, and what is more, to have brought together authors of very different disciplines. Thereby an informative and comprehensive work has come into existence that spans a wide arc: from the lyric poetry to the Blätter-Society, science, and economics; from mythologizing to politics; from homosexuality to misogyny; from antisemitism to National Socialism. The volume delivers thusly many specific points of departure for new research into George and the George Circle, yet remains accessible to a broader readership as an advanced introduction. In its abundance this book opens to the Anglophone world a nuanced access to George the poet and the social figure.