Be warned! This is not a travel guide. Nor is it a cross-cultural manual for business people. And it is certainly not a deep, psychological treatise on the German psyche. But have you ever wondered why the Bavarians drink beer at breakfast, or why the car is the ultimate German status symbol? Why do Germans smile when asked "Same procedure?" and how can you learn to speak fluent German, instantly? This book gives the answers, and reveals a multitude of other secrets for all those wanting to better understand what makes Germans tick.

The Cult of Art in Nazi Germany presents a new interpretation of National Socialism, arguing that art in the Third Reich was not simply an instrument of the regime, but actually became a source of the racist politics upon which its ideology was founded. Through the myth of the "Aryan race," a race pronounced superior because it alone creates culture, Nazism asserted art as the sole raison d'être of a regime defined by Hitler as the "dictatorship of genius." Michaud shows the important link between the religious nature of Nazi art and the political movement, revealing that in Nazi Germany art was considered to be less a witness of history than a force capable of producing future, the actor capable of accelerating the coming of a reality immanent to art itself.

DIV Paintings by Renaissance masters Cranach, Dürer, and Holbein are among the highlights featured in the first comprehensive study of the largest collection of early German paintings in America. /div

Essays in this volume seek to clarify the meaning of tragedy and the tragic in its many German contexts, art forms, and disciplines, from literature and philosophy to music, painting, and history.

American national trade bibliography.