"In the Beginning was Napoleon"--"Napoleon and no end": Inspiration Bonaparte explores German responses to Bonaparte in literature, philosophy, painting, science, education, music, and film from his rise to the present.Two hundred years after his death, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) continues to resonate as a fascinating, ambivalent, and polarizing figure. Differences of opinion as to whether Bonaparte should be viewed as the executor of the principles of the French Revolution or as the figure who was principally responsible for their corruption are as pronounced today as they were at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Contributing to what had been an uneasy German relationship with the French Revolution, the rise of Bonaparte was accompanied by a pattern of Franco-German hostilities that inspired both enthusiastic support and outraged dissent in the German-speaking states. The fourteen essays that comprise Inspiration Bonaparte examine the mythologization of Napoleon in German literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and explore the significant impact of Napoleonic occupation on a broad range of fields including philosophy, painting, politics, the sciences, education, and film. As the contributions from leading scholars emphasize, the contradictory attitudes toward Bonaparte held by so many prominent German thinkers are a reflection of his enduring status as a figure through whom the trauma of shattered late-Enlightenment expectations of sociopolitical progress and evolving concepts of identity politics is mediated.

AcknowledgmentsIntroductionSeán Allan and Jeffrey L. HighPart I. Napoleon: Art, Literature, and Occupation1: Prelude-Pre-Occupation Bonaparte: Historical and Literary Conquerors in Schiller's Life, Thought, and WorksJeffrey L. High2: Schiller's Johanna and Collin's Bianca as Women('s)-Liberators in Anti-Napoleonic DramaRebecca Stewart3: Friedrich Hölderlin, the French Revolution, and Napoleon: Politics, Poetry, PhilosophyLaura Anna Macor4: The Anecdote on the Battlefield: Napoleon-Kleist-KlugeChristian Moser5: "Der große Schauspieler, Napoleon Buonaparte": August von Kotzebue's Antitheatrical PoliticsElystan Griffiths6: An Ingenious Tyrant: The Representation of Napoleon Bonaparte by German Women WritersElisabeth Krimmer7: Icons of Resistance: Kleist, Le Musée Napoléon, and Queen Luise of PrussiaSeán AllanPart II. Napoleon: Political Science and Natural Science8: The European Machine God: The Image of Napoleon Bonaparte in the Political Writings of Jean PaulHelmut J. Schneider9: Saul Ascher's NapoleonBernd Fischer10: Napoleon's Campaigns: Models for "French" Revolutionary Science Abroad and at Home?Mary Orr11: Napoleonic Occupation and the Militarization of the Sciences: The Case of Johannes Scherr and the Zurich PolytechnicAndrew CusackPart III. Inspiration Bonaparte: German Receptions from Vormärz to the Present12: "We are all possessed!" Napoleon and Inspiration in German Naturalist DramaMichael White13: Arnold Schoenberg's Setting of Byron's Ode to Napoleon: Fighting Hitler's Regime in Byron's and Beethoven's WakeWolf Kittler14: The Emperor's Clothes: Napoleon as a Screen IconSusanne KordNotes on the ContributorsIndex