Anja Ernst, Paul Geyer (Ed.)
Die Romantik: ein Gründungsmythos der Europäischen Moderne
1. Edition 2010
595 pages
ISBN 978-3-89971-695-5
Bonn University Press at V&R unipress
Gründungsmythen Europas in Literatur, Musik und Kunst -
plus S&H
Book
It is time to install a cultural vision of what is European alongside the technocratic definition! Modern European culture is the only world culture that has developed an ironic, sentimental relation to its cultural heritage. In the knowledge that the values of mediaeval Christianity, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment are no longer sustainable, European culture is at the same time aware that if this heritage is not cultivated, it will lose its identity.
Modern Europe’s relationship to its tradition is rooted in Romanticism. Romanticism critically reflects the other epochs and events in European history in terms of their suitability as founding myths for European modernism. A future European cultural science must examine what elements of the heritage of European nation-states is suitable as a European founding myth – for a Europe of the future, and not of the past. This volume provides evidence that Romanticism constitutes one of the most important founding myths of modern Europe.
