Reactionary modernism : technology, culture, and politics in Weimar and the Third Reich / Jeffrey Herf.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Herf, Jeffrey, 1947- author.

Series:

ACLS Humanities E-Book.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Enlightenment--Germany.

Enlightenment.

Germany--History--1918-1933.

Germany.

Germany--Intellectual life--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 251 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First paperback edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In a unique application of critical theory to the study of the role of ideology in politics, Jeffrey Herf explores the paradox inherent in the German fascists' rejection of the rationalism of the Enlightenment while fully embracing modern technology. He documents evidence of a cultural tradition he calls 'reactionary modernism' found in the writings of German engineers and of the major intellectuals of the. Weimar right: Ernst Juenger, Oswald Spengler, Werner Sombart, Hans Freyer, Carl Schmitt, and Martin Heidegger. The book shows how German nationalism and later National Socialism created what Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister, called the 'steel-like romanticism of the twentieth century'. By associating technology with the Germans, rather than the Jews, with beautiful form rather than the formlessness of the market, and with a strong state rather than a predominance of economic values and institutions, these right-wing intellectuals reconciled Germany's strength with its romantic soul and national identity.

Contents:

The paradox of reactionary modernism

The conservative revolution in Weimar

Oswald Spengler: bourgeois antinomies, reactionary reconciliations

Ernst Junger's magical realism

Technology and three mandarin thinkers

Werner Sombart: technology and the Jewish question

Engineers as ideologues

Reactionary modernism in the Third Reich.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780511097058

0511097050

9780511583988

0511583982

Publisher Number:

2027/heb01992 hdl