Providing a comprehensive survey of cutting edge scholarship in the field of German-Indian and South Asian Studies, the book looks at the history of German-Indian relations in the spheres of culture, politics, and intellectual life. Combining transnational, post-colonial, and comparative approaches, it includes the entire twentieth century, from the First World War and Weimar Republic to the Third Reich and Cold War era.

Introduction Part 1: Pre-Colonial Germany and India 1. Fostering Aesthetic Tolerance through Literary Translation: Georg Forster's Sakuntala 2. India and Hegel's "Scientific" Method in the Phenomenology of Spirit 3. Claims and Disclaimers: Schopenhauer and the Cross-cultural Comparative Enterprise Part 2: Imperial Germany and India 4. Rudolf Steiner and the Theosophy of Greed 5. The Redemption of the Scientist: Richard Garbe as a Chronicler of India 6. German Travelers to India at the Fin-de-siècle and Their Ambivalent Views of the Raj Part 3: Germany and India during Interwar Years 7. Germans in India between Kaiserreich and the End of World War II 8. Cross-Cultural Transfer and Indophilia in Count Hermann Keyserling 9. Asian Anti-Imperialism and Leftist Antagonism in Weimar Germany Part 4: Nazi Germany and India 10. Indian Political Activities in Germany, 1914-1945 11. The Orientalist Roots of National Socialism? Nazism, Occultism, and South Asian Spirituality, 1919-1945 12. The Melancholy of the Thinking Racist: India and the Ambiguities of Race in the Work of Hans F. K. Günther Part 5: Germany and India since 1945 13. West Germany's India policy 1949 to 1972 14. East meets East: Fritz Bennewitz's Theatrical Journeys from the GDR to India 15. The Passion of Paul Hacker: Indology, Orientalism, and Evangelism