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Chapter 26 - Politics and Religion

from Part IV - Society and Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2019

By
David Brodbeck
Edited by
Natasha Loges  and
Katy Hamilton
Natasha Loges
Affiliation:
Royal College of Music, London
Katy Hamilton
Affiliation:
Royal College of Music, London
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Summary

We begin our consideration of Brahms’s politics and religion with the great historical turn that occurred in the centre of Europe in the year 1870. With the decisive German military defeat of France and proclamation of King Wilhelm I of Prussia as German Emperor, the German Question was at last given its definitive Prussian-dominated Smaller German solution. Brahms probably would have preferred a Larger German solution that included Austria, Prussia’s traditional rival for leadership in the loosely bound German Confederation that was established by the Congress of Vienna following Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815. But what mattered most was that Germany had at last emerged from its political impotence to become a nation-state possessed of power and influence in the world commensurate with its long-recognised achievements in the cultural sphere.

Keywords

BrahmscontextpoliticsreligionGermanyBismarckLutherliberalRequiemJewish
Type
Chapter
Information
Brahms in Context , pp. 259 - 268
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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References

Further Reading

Beller-McKenna, D., Brahms and the German Spirit (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar
Blackbourn, D., History of Germany 1780–1918: The Long Nineteenth Century, 2nd edn (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003)Google Scholar
Brodbeck, D., Defining Deutschtum: Political Ideology, German Identity, and Music-Critical Discourse in Liberal Vienna (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minor, R., Choral Fantasies: Music, Festivity, and Nationhood in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)Google Scholar
Smith, H. W., German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar

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