The Orient of Europe: The Mythical Image of India and Competing Images of German National Identity
Author: Nicholas A. Germana
Date Of Publication: Mar 2009
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-0192-8
Isbn: 1-4438-0192-5
August Wilhelm Schlegel proclaimed that “[i]f the regeneration of the human species started in the East, Germany must be considered the Orient of Europe.” How can this remarkable identification of Germany with the subjugated oriental ‘other’ be explained? In The Orient of Europe, Nicholas A. Germana explores how German thinkers, especially those associated with the Early Romantic movement, set India up as an “ideal mirror,” in which they could perceive the image of the Germany they longed for – a nation whose greatness lay not in political and military power, but in the realm of culture and the spirit. Such an image was especially important during the years of French occupation and the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon.

The ‘mythical image’ of India, however, underwent profound changes in the decades after 1815. The end of the Wars of Liberation and the onset of the Restoration era, led to the decline of the romantic image of India. As statist visions of German unity rose in prominence, especially in Prussia, this image of the connection between Germany and ancient India took on a new complexion. Politically volatile romantic “Indomania” gave way to a new, more acceptable, ideology – the ideology of Wissenschaft.

In this book, which engages with the most recent scholarship in the rapidly emerging field of German Orientalism, Germana challenges traditional Saidian Orientalist readings of German intellectual engagement with Indian thought and literature. German romantic and humanist fascination with India, he argues, is best understood within the context of debates about the nature of ‘Germany’ and ‘Germanness’ in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, rather than in connection with nascent German “colonial fantasies.”

Nicholas A. Germana is an Assistant Professor of History at Keene State College, in New Hampshire. His publications to date include “Herder’s India: The ‘Morgenland’ in Mythology and Anthropology,” in Anthropology of the Enlightenment (Stanford University Press, 2007). His research focuses on German Romanticism and Idealism, as well as the emergence of German nationalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

“Germana adds a new facet to existing scholarship on German Orientalism with an in depth analysis of the rise and fall of the mythical image of India….. Readers will find The Orient of Europe to be a useful survey of the broader debates and specific texts in which an impressive range of important thinkers created and then undermined the mythical image of India.”

- Tuska Benes, Assistant Professor of History, College of William and Mary. Author of In Babel's Shadow: Language, Philology, and Nation in Nineteenth Century Germany (Wayne State University Press, 2008)

“This is a wonderful book that both scholars of the German interest in India and readers new to the topic will read with fascination to glean valuable new insights. It compellingly examines Indo-German connections in exciting and fresh ways, incorporating work that has only very recently become available.”

- Douglas T. McGetchin, Assistant Professor of History, Florida Atlantic University, Florida, USA. Recent publications

"Eloquently written and well-informed, "The Orient of Europe" fills a visible gap in research on German-Indian encounters. Nicholas Germana has submitted an excellent framework for further studies of the relationship between India and Germany and he has successfully challenged well-established concepts with which we understand this relationship."

- Christine Lehleiter, University of Toronto

"Nicholas A. Germana's book provides a scrupulous survey of the various debates in Germany during the early part of the nineteenth century that surrounded the establishment of Indology as an academic discipline within the newly founded field of comparative linguistics.

The merit of Germana's book lies in its scrupulous exposition of historical developments in early nineteenth century Germany and the ample biographical material that it provides about the German intellectuals who were involved, however motivated, in using Vedic India selectively - within a political vaccuum - to gratify their need for an Urmythos."

Kamakshi P. Murti, Middlebury College in the American Historical Review, April 2011.

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

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