Called by Heinrich Heine a city of dull and culturally limited merchants where poets only go to die, Hamburg would seem an improbable setting for a major new intellectual movement. Yet it was there, at a new university in an unintellectual banking city at the end of World War I, that a trio of innovative thinkers emerged. Together, Aby Warburg, Ernst Cassirer, and Erwin Panofsky developed new avenues of thought in cultural theory, art history, and philosophy, changing the course of cultural and intellectual history not just in Weimar Germany, but throughout the world. In Dreamland of Humanists, Emily J. Levine considers not just these men, but the historical significance of the time and place where their ideas first took form. Shedding light on the origins of their work in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Levine clarifies the social, political, and economic pressures faced by German-Jewish scholars on the periphery of Germany's intellectual world. And by examining the role that this context plays in our analysis of their ideas, Levine confirms that great ideas - like great intellectuals - must come from somewhere.

About the Author
Emily J. Levine is assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Born in New York City, she lives in Durham, NC.

Reviews
"Dreamland of Humanists is a deeply researched, well-structured, and elegantly written work of history that brings to life the city of Hamburg, a place which, thanks to its unique Hanseatic economic and political traditions, served as a welcome home for the Warburg Library and the three German Jewish intellectuals most closely associated with its name. Emily J. Levine should be commended." (Peter E. Gordon, author of Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos)"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226061689
Author Emily Levine
Format Hardback
Page Count 464
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 737g
Dimensions(mm) 24mm * 16mm * 3mm