A Serious Matter and True Joy

Philanthropy, the Arts, and the State in Leipzig (1750-1918)

Series: 

This book offers a novel approach to the history of high culture and new perspectives on the history of civil society in provincial Germany. It makes the concept of place a central means for understanding how art culture was defined, consumed, and, importantly, distributed over the course of the long nineteenth century. It shows how “temples of culture” come to be built where they were built. It further demonstrates who participated in their planning, funding, construction, and ultimate evolution into public institutions, highlighting underexamined links between the history of art culture and that of urban history and civil society.
Copyright Year:
2022
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ISBN:
978-90-04-50780-7
Publication:
21 Mar 2022
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-50778-4
Publication:
24 Mar 2022
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Margaret Eleanor Menninger, Ph.D (1998), Harvard University, is Associate Professor of History at Texas State University and Executive Director of the German Studies Association. Her most recent co-edited book is The Total Work of Art: Foundations, Articulations, Inspirations (Berghahn, 2016).
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Abbreviations

Introduction
 Part 1: Cultural Philanthropy on Stage
 Part 2: Cultural Philanthropy for Show
 Part 3: Cultural Philanthropy Unresolved

part 1: Cultural Philanthropy on Stage


Introduction to Part 1

1 Theater in the Second City
 1 Theatrical and Operatic Leipzig before 1766
 2 Building on the Edge: The Theater on the Rannstadt Bastion
 3 Local Control – the Komödienhaus Becomes the Stadttheater

2 Pride and Scandal: Creating a Municipal Theater
 1 Transitions and Revolutions
 2 Money Talks: Financing and Building the ‘Neues Theater’
 3 Fighting Out in the Open: Scandal and Ruin
 4 Access Means Control: Intragovernmental Conflict

part 2: Cultural Philanthropy for Show: Museums


Introduction to Part 2

3 Kunstkammer – Kunstverein – Kunstsmuseum: The City Art Museum
 1 Keeping Up with the Augustiner: Leipzig vs. Dresden and the Formation of the Leipziger Kunstverein
 2 The Business of Fancy: The Kunstverein and Leipzig’s Economic Elites
 3 Framing the Art: Building a Museum

4 Art, Commerce, and a Global Presence: The Grassi Museum
 1 “Leipzig kommt!” Becoming a Großstadt
 2 Windfall: The Grassi Bequest
 3 Aesthetics and Commerce: The Applied Arts Museum
 4 The Museum für Völkerkunde: Consuming the World
 5 Municipal Museums and Leipzig’s Self-Representation as an ‘Art City’

part 3: Cultural Philanthropy Unresolved: Musikstadt Leipzig


Introduction to Part 3

5 Ensemble Players: The Großes Concert and Musical Life in Leipzig before 1850
 1 The Großes Concert and the Origins of the Gewandhaus Orchestra
 2 Becoming the Orchestra in the Gewandhaus
 3 Musical Networks
 4 Rise to Fame: The Gewandhaus to Mid-Century

6 Excellence and Exclusivity: A New Concert Hall and Local Challenges
 1 Disharmony and Its Discontents
 2 Money and Land: The Campaign for a New Concert Hall, 1860–1884
 3 Exclusivity Challenged: Big-City Politics, Rival Associations, and the Debate about a Second City Orchestra, 1890 to the End of World War One

Coda
Bibliography
Index
This book is aimed at academic audiences in history, musicology, art history, theater history, urban studies, and specialists in arts funding.
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