Suchergebnisse

In Claudio Magris's first pioneering study The Habsburg Myth in Modern Austrian Literature published by Einaudi in 1963, the poet of Habsburg legitimacy Franz Grillparzer represents the keystone of the proposed historiographical reconstruction: in particular, Magris recognises the peculiar characters of the myth in Grillparzer's dramatic works. This article reinterprets the masterpiece of the Austrian playwright entitled Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg taking its cue from Carl Schmitt, who associated the main character of Grillparzer's drama with the enigmatical figure of the katechon, i.e. the braking power mentioned in a letter by Paul of Tarsus. From the political-philosophical perspective of the article, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II is not so much the personification of Magris's characterization of the "myth" as the holder of a braking power who fails (as his antagonists) because he must act. Therefore, the crucial moment in the genesis of the "Habsburg myth" lies not so much in the protagonist himself as in the construction of the dramatic action.

"Poetry and the law are born in the same cradle". Thus Jacob Grimm, the great Romantic philologist and founding father of German studies, wrote in 1816. This famous statement was inspired by the new juridical science fostered by his ma - ster, Friedrich Carl von Savigny. With the establishment of the Historical School of Law in 1814, and by assigning a fundamental role to the jurists'interpretation, Savigny had proposed to maintain the old Reich's heritage in Germany rather than introducing a civil code fashioned after the Napoleonic template, thus lay - ing the foundations of a bond between the study of the old German law, the Ro - mantic Lied and the aspirations of many writers and intellectuals who, like Jacob Grimm, believed in the rediscovery of the German people authentic traditions. In nineteenth-century Germany, nation building and state building were thus both conceived and supported by means of that bond between law and literature. In this case the law-literature paradigm guided the process which combined the cultural formation of German identity with the political project of national uni - fication. The essay outlines the development of this fascinating and ambiguous project and its ultimate failure in 1848.

In questa nuova edizione aumentata e aggiornata del saggio pubblicato nel 1990, Maria Carolina Foi ricostruisce la peculiare relazione fra diritto, letteratura e politica che caratterizza la Germania dopo il 1814. Quando potrà realizzarsi l'unificazione nazionale? Con la Scuola Storica del grande giurista Savigny si creano allora le premesse di un intreccio fra lo studio dell'antico diritto germanico, la poesia romantica e le aspirazioni di intellettuali che, come Jacob Grimm, credevano nella riscoperta delle tradizioni autentiche del popolo tedesco. Sullo sfondo dell'attuale successo internazionale delle ricerche su 'Law and Literature', il libro ricostruisce la germanistica 'interdisciplinare' delle origini e spiega perché quel progetto culturale e politico fallisce nel 1848. A fornire la chiave di questa interpretazione è Heinrich Heine, il massimo poeta ebreo tedesco dell'Ottocento. Il libro mette in relazione la sua formazione giuridica e le sue opere giovanili e analizza così il suo confronto critico con la vecchia Germania di Grimm e dei germanisti. Con la celebre formula di deutsche Misere, sarà infatti lui per primo a denunciare la distanza fra le conquiste spirituali, filosofiche e letterarie e l'arretratezza delle condizioni politico-sociali della Germania.

A consideration of the phenomenon of international exhibitions in the political and cultural history of central-European powers as opposed to the models represented by the London and Paris great exhibitions offers relevant insights into this topic. The Exposition organized in Vienna in 1873 – the first in the German language area – should be studied in the light of the strategic urgency which impelled the Habsburg Empire to fashion or redefine a representation of its multinational formation, in the wake of the military defeats it suffered on the French-Piedmont and Prussian fronts. As will become apparent in the later Berlin exhibition of 1879, the Wiener Weltausstellung already makes clear its desire to exhibit the network of global relations in which the central-European Empires were also trying to gain prominence, despite the essential irrelevance of their extra- European colonial enterprise, as compared to British and French imperialist ventures.The essay comprises a critical reassessment of the existing historiographies specifically devoted to the Viennese Exposition (the most significant of which dates to 1989), to be revised in the light of updated interpretive paradigms, and a further analysis which aims at a first systematic taxonomy of the most significant literary and journalistic echoes of this first central-European Weltausstellung. More specifically, the investigation will focus on the hundreds of articles, correspondence and notes which appeared in the Triester Zeitung, the principal newspaper in German in Habsburg Trieste. These textual sources have not as yet received scholarly attention and they make it possible to investigate the reception of the Exhibition within the geographical and cultural context of the multilingual and multicultural port of Trieste which, despite its peripheral position, was, nonetheless, of primary strategic importance to the central Austrian government.