Down from Olympus
Subtitle: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970
Edition: New Ed edition
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: January 6, 2003
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 424
ISBN-13: 9780691114781
Subjects: Classical Greek & Roman archaeology; European history: c 1750 to c 1900; European history: from c 1900 -; History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900; History of art & design styles: from c 1900 -; History; Archaeology / Anthropology; History: World; Germany; Archaeology; Europe - Germany; History - Ancient & Classical; Archaeology and Ancient History; Art and Architecture; European History; History / Germany
First sentence: ABOVE ALL, the Germans admired the Greeks because the Greeks admired, cultivated, and exemplified the beautiful.
Description: In Down from Olympus Suzanne Marchand attempts to come to grips with German Graecophilia, not as a private passion but as an institutionally generated and preserved cultural trope. The book argues that nineteenth-century philhellenes inherited both an elitist normative aesthetics and an ascetic scholarly ethos from their Romantic predecessors; German "neohumanists" promised to reconcile these intellectual commitments, and by so doing, to revitalize education and the arts. Focusing on the history of classical archaeology, Marchand shows how the injunction to imitate Greek art, especially sculpture, was made the basis for new, state-funded cultural institutions. Tracing interactions between scholars and policymakers that made possible grand-scale cultural feats like the acquisition of the Pergamum Altar, she underscores both the gains in specialized knowledge and the failures in social responsibility that were the distinctive products of German neohumanism. Most important, Marchand traces the history of the study, excavation, and exhibition of Greek art as a means to confront the social, cultural and political consequences of the specialization of scholarship in the last two centuries. Although it emphasizes the persistence of ancient models, Down from Olympus is very much a modern tale.