Table of Contents

Introduction: Why "Nuremberg"?
A Small Town in Germany
The Capital of Nostalgia
Metropolitan Monument
Empire of Longing
Representing Rapture
Nuremberg Goes Global
Conclusion: Ab Urbe ad Orbem
Works Cited
Index

About the Author

STEPHEN BROCKMANN is Professor of German with courtesy appointments in English and History at Carnegie Mellon University.

Reviews

Brockmann's in-depth study demonstrates how the city of Nuremberg has been a focal point of discourses on Germany and Germanness at least from the Age of Romanticism.... [A]n excellent contribution to German cultural studies. The author's combination of historiography, museum studies, literary analysis, and film studies, to name but a few of the fields he explores, will prove worthwhile reading.... A highly useful and stimulating source for ... German studies and beyond....
*MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW*

[T]races the construction of a particular form of urban legend, the idealized German city of the Meistersinger that the Nazis exploited so successfully.... [G]ood on the ways that myths are constructed, with an excellent feel for what scholars call 'the invention of tradition.
*TLS*

[F]ew historians have examined the past of Nuremberg.... Brockmann undertakes to remedy this omission through a cultural study that shows how the city's past has been reconstructed through writers, artists, and filmmakers over five centuries.... [C]oncerns constructions of history as much as it does the town itself.
*CHOICE*

[Brockmann's study] brings to light -- in its blending of local, national, and world history -- numerous aspects of Nuremberg's history that will be new even to the native historian.
*MITTEILUNGEN DES VEREINS FÜR GESCHICHTE DER STADT NÜRNBERG*

...[R]anges through an impressive array of primary sources to illuminate the many ways that scholars, writers, artists, and politicians have represented Nuremberg as a 'synecdoche' of Germany over the past two hundred years.... The multiple levels on which Brockmann operates and the variety of sources he explores ... make the book thorough, enjoyable to read, and full of material that should be of interest to a wide variety of scholars.
*H-NET GERMAN REVIEWS*

Brockmann's study ... stands out as one of the most original and thought-provoking contributions to the genre [of memory studies]. It should be essential reading for anyone interested in the culture and politics of Germany since 1800.
*JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES*

Brockmann guides his reader through the topographies of various Nurembergs in such a way that the cities effortlessly merge in his imagination.... He introduces us to the many voices of ordinary citizens, but also of Richard Wagner and Leni Riefenstahl....
*GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW*