Goethe
In Our Time6 Huhti 2006

Goethe

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the great German polymath. 'I had the great advantage of being born at a time that was ripe for earth-shaking events which continued throughout my long life, so that I witnessed the Seven Years War...the French Revolution, and the whole Napoleonic era down to the defeat of the hero and what followed after him. As a result I have attained completely different insights and conclusions than will ever be possible for people who are born now...' Goethe's friend Johann Peter Eckermann recorded these remarks made by the great writer at the end of his life in a series of published recollections. Goethe's life was indeed remarkable. At the age of twenty-five he was author of the first German international best-seller The Sorrows of Young Werther. A year later, he was invited by the Grand Duke to join him at the Imperial Court as Privy Councillor where he oversaw commissions on war, roads and tax. He rode to war with the Prussian Army against the French and embarked on a remarkable creative friendship with Schiller which saw the establishment of a new form of German theatre. What made Goethe the dominant cultural icon of his time and after? What links were there between his interest in politics and the arts? Why did he support Napoleon despite the French invasion of Weimar? How did his relationships with women define his work? And how was he able to transform the status of the German language? With Tim Blanning, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge; Sarah Colvin, Professor of German at the University of Edinburgh; W. Daniel Wilson, Professor of German at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Jaksot(1086)

Intelligence

Intelligence

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a question that has stalked the twentieth century: Intelligence. Since the first IQ tests were invented in 1905, the question of what makes Homo Sapiens stupid and what...

1 Heinä 199928min

Capitalism

Capitalism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss capitalism throughout the last two centuries. In 1848 Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto described the dynamic force of capitalism as it swept through the 19th centur...

24 Kesä 199928min

The Great Disruption

The Great Disruption

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the shift that has gone on through the 20th century from our being an industrial society to what is often called ‘the information society’. Francis Fukuyama’s book, The...

17 Kesä 199928min

The Monarchy

The Monarchy

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British monarchy. In the last two hundred and fifty years, we’ve beheaded one king, exiled another, hired a distant German-speaking dynasty to fill the monarch’s ro...

10 Kesä 199928min

Just War

Just War

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the idea of a just war. There were theories about a justified or noble war before the birth of Christ, but it was his reported teachings and a powerful influence, parti...

3 Kesä 199928min

Memory and Culture

Memory and Culture

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss memory. At the start of the twentieth century Freud put memory at the centre of our psychology, and as the century has worn on what a nation remembers and what it shoul...

27 Touko 199928min

The Universe's Origins

The Universe's Origins

Melvyn Bragg examines the history of what we know about the origins of the universe. Some four hundred years ago in Rome, one Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake for his belief in other inhabited wo...

20 Touko 199928min

Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss multiculturalism. The divisions between people provoked and exploited because of differences in religion, culture, nationality and race seem to beset the planet the mor...

13 Touko 199928min

Suosittua kategoriassa Historia

olipa-kerran-otsikko
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
mayday-fi
huijarit
mystista
rss-ikiuni
tsunami
totuus-vai-salaliitto
konginkangas
sotaa-ja-historiaa-podi
rss-i-dont-like-mondays-2
rss-sattuu-sita-suomessakin
rouva-diktaattori
apinan-vuosi
rss-subjektiivinen-todistaja
rss-kirkon-ihmeellisimmat-tarinat
historian-nurkkapoyta
tiedetta-ja-sirkushuveja-vanhojen-aikojen-podcast
rss-peter-peter
rss-historian-pitka-oppimaara