Der deutsch-italienische Band präsentiert die Ergebnisse einer interdisziplinären Tagung in der Villa Vigoni, die sich mit der Konstituierung neuer Diskursformen zur Wahrnehmung und Bewertung der bildenden Kunst im Verlauf des 18. Jahrhunderts befasst hatte.

Vor dem Hintergrund einer kulturpolitisch spannungsreichen Antikenrezeption werden in den vorliegenden Beiträgen, ausgehend von Winckelmanns Umdeutung der Ekphrase zu einem Medium ästhetischer Selbstanalyse, Versprachlichungsprozesse der Kunstbetrachtung untersucht, die sich an dem bis weit ins 19. Jahrhundert gültigen Konstrukt einer zeitlosen griechischen Klassik orientieren. Deren mythologischer, nunmehr unter anthropologischen und ästhetischen Gesichtspunkten neu definierter Kontext gewinnt in der Literatur der Kunstperiode eine Eigendynamik, die sich in großen kulturgeschichtlichen Erzählungen, exemplarischen Novellen wie in sozialutopischen Entwürfen manifestiert.

Aus der Deskription und Reflexion von Kunsterfahrung entwickeln sich narrative Formen, in denen das archaische Kunstwerk als Leitbild einer künftigen, weltbürgerlich vereinten Menschheit hervortritt und sich zugleich in seinem für die Moderne charakteristischen autonomen Status des Kunstwerks profiliert.

After the First World War, the Catholic Church was forced on the defensive by totalitarian mass-movements in both Italy and Germany. Fascism and National Socialism challenged Catholicism’s traditional position in society.

This volume is the first to bring together contributions by leading German and Italian historians and theologians and thus to present a graphic account of the Catholic Church's strategies for asserting itself between 1918 and 1943/45.

Die Reise nach Italien gehörte seit dem 17. Jahrhundert mit zum akademischen Ausbildungsprogramm von nordeuropäischen Architekten und Künstlern. Dieses sich mit der Grand Tour institutionalisierende Bildungsideal geriet seit der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts in die Kritik und machte anderen Formen der Italienerfahrung Platz.

Was sich im späten 19. und radikaler dann noch im 20. Jahrhundert wandelte, war die Einstellung der Italienreisenden zum Kanon klassischer Kunst. Die künstlerischen Anknüpfungen an die Antike und Renaissance nahmen nun freiere Formen an, wurden un- und außerakademisch bis hin zur zitathaft spielerischen Aneignung und Formcollage der Postmoderne.

Die Frage, die das Buch zu stellen versucht, ist jene nach der Funktion der "Italienerfahrung" in der Ausbildung von Architekten, Künstlern und Kunstwissenschaftlern heute. Historische Beispiele der Befürwortung und Ablehnung der Grand Tour, Meinungen auch zum Für und Wider "klassischer" Bildungsinhalte in Zeiten der kulturellen Entgrenzung, umkreisen das Problem einer sich als gegenwärtig verstehenden "Erziehung zur Kunst".

Both Germany and Italy take an intense interest in each other's history between the seizure of power (1922 in Italy, 1933 in Germany) and the end of the Second World War. From a comparative viewpoint there has however been relative neglect of the question of how academe, the state, and society have attempted to come to terms with the heritage of dictatorship and war after 1945.

The ›historiographic dialogue‹ in November 2003 provided an opportunity of pinpointing and discussing the parallels and contrasts in academic, political, and social confrontation with the history of dictatorship and the effects of the Second World War.

The year 2001 was the 300th anniversary of the elevation of Prussia to the status of a kingdom, and in Germany this was the occasion for more profound academic and public engagement with Prussian history.

In Italy the humanities can look back on a long tradition of academic interest in Prussian/German subject matter. The symposium on 'Italy and Prussia' organized by the Villa Vigoni German-Italian Centre in October 2002 was a welcome opportunity for a 'dialogue' between Italian and German approaches to historiography. This volume assembles the papers presented at the symposium.

Approaches to a history of European mentality in the modern age are derived here from the confrontation of thematically related works in German and Italian literature.

The emphasis is on the following topics: the universal idea of Europe advanced in Romanticism and its replacement by national concepts, the corresponding forms taken by the historiography of national literature, the concepts of melancholy operative in the age of restoration, the specific national variations on the theme of decadence, the positions taken up by European conservatism and aestheticism, the comparison between Italian futurism and German expressionism, strategies for coming to terms with the First and Second World War, and literary memorialization of the holocaust.

Medieval Italian urban legislation is well documented. It represents a rich and hitherto inadequately exploited source for studies in the history of art and the history of law.

The documents that have come down to us not only provide information on the layout and design of squares, monuments, churches, and fortifications, but also indicate the aesthetic concerns of the authorities involved and their visions of the bellezza della città.

The volume is a record of the proceedings of an interdisciplinary symposium that took place at the Villa Vigoni on Lake Como, 20-23 September 2001.

This book provides an introduction to the history of cultural relations between Germany and Italy and outlines the legal foundations of German cultural policy in Italy.

It indicates the prejudices and national stereotypes German cultural policy in Italy has to engage with and in so doing shows where the tasks and challenges will lie in future. A detailed documentation section lists and describes the Federal Republic's central cultural agencies in Italy.

Central to this study is the inception and reception of an aesthetic concept in the context of 19th century Bildungsbürgertum. It reconstructs the birth of Burckhardt's aesthetic judgment from his 'Italian experience'. His »Cicerone« is discussed as a conservatively oriented appraisal of the art forms of classical Italy and thus as a thesaurus of things worthy of preservation in an age of political and aesthetic upheaval.

What Burckhardt (1818-1897) calls 'Kunst nach Aufgaben' (art as a function of its purpose) is drawn on as a polemic defense against the modern artist allowing free rein to the products of an overheated artistic imagination. Burckhardt's work thus stands both as a guide to the true appreciation of art and an exhortation to contemporary architects not to lose sight of their >genuine< calling.

These articles concern themselves with the beginnings of literature and film production in Italy and Germany after 1945. The focus is on differences and parallels resulting from the specific historical conditions governing cultural life under Italian Fascism and National Socialism respectively.

A further central concern is the impact of Italian literature in postwar Germany, a representative instance of which is the work of Malparte, one of the most widely read Italian authors in the years immediately after 1945.

The papers brought together in this volume stem from a German-Italian colloquium held in September 1994 and concentrate a) on the Arcadian image of Italy and its perception by German travelers to Italy, and b) on the presence of Italy in Weimar around 1800.

The studies refer to a broad range of different literary genres - travel literature, elegy, epigram, novel, artist biography, drama - and extend their purview to embrace biography and autobiography alongside fictional texts. In so doing they are able to document the material, historical and intellectual foundations upon which the highly detailed image of Italy in Goethe's Weimar was based.

The articles in this volume delineate not only the appropriation of Italy by foreign travellers worshipfully communing with the spirit of the places they visited, but also inquire to what extent a degree of friction in the encounter with this Mediterranean Mecca has led to productive results for artists, composers and writers. Thus it is not the 'transfer of ideas' between two countries and intellectual traditions that looms largest here but the active engagement with Italy and its reflection in artistic terms.

Kunst will sprechend sein, Literatur anschaulich. Seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, mit der Entfaltung eines emphatischen Begriffs autonomer Kunst, wird das schwieriger und doch auch dringlicher. Kunstliteratur wird zu einem privilegierten ästhetischen Genus.

Die Bilder brauchen, wiewohl eigengesetzlich, Worte als neue Hermeneutik, anstelle der schwindenden ikonographischen Selbstverständlichkeiten; die Worte brauchen Bildwerke zur Beglaubigung des Neuen und zur Evidenz- und Gestaltfindung im Unerhörten. Italien wird wird mehr denn je das Land einschlägiger ästhetischer Erfahrungen.

Deshalb widmen sich die Beiträge dieses Bandes der Kunstliteratur als und aus Italienerfahrung - von Herder bis Goethe, von Heinse und Moritz bis Carus, von der Landschaftsästhetik bis zu den Mäzenen, Sammlern und Kunsthistorikern in der ersten Hälfte unseres Jahrhunderts.