Search Results

“... for a documentary, the subject of which was by no means clear to me’. As one of his biographers, Otto Friedrich, comments, the subject was perfectly clear: Gould was simply fascinated by the idea of isolation and solitude, perhaps the major part of the North’s allure for artists. In 1998 I went to Newfoundland myself. Outside the harbour of St ...”

“... the unsettling adoration of the primitive found in the art of the German visionaries Philip Otto Runge and Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Sentimentality has become a great offence in contemporary aesthetics and – less justifiably – in politics, and with the new art brut, there has been a leap of interest in the late ...”

“... first full biography. It’s an admirably intelligent and readable account of a complex figure. Friedrich is especially good at balancing the public and private aspects of his subject. He suggests the possible psychological determinants of Gould’s behaviour with tact and just the right amount of surmise, and his book adequately poses, without trying to ...”

“... dates from the mid 13th century; the earliest castle, built by the prince elector of Brandenburg Friedrich II (‘Irontooth’), dates from 1443. It met resistance from the start. Friedrich’s plan to erect a Zwingburg, a real fortress, wasn’t popular with Berliners, who feared the permanent presence of their Landesherr ...”

“... since entered general use in Germany. Others had written on the subject before Frei, notably Jörg Friedrich and Ulrich Brochhagen; more have done so since. But no one has written better. This is an important work: very well researched, reflective, sharp in judgment yet alive to complexity. Frei’s book is in three parts, each a cross-section of the years ...”

“... of nationalist thinkers, and was symbolised in the ‘imperial crown of Charlemagne’ (actually Otto I), which Kaiser Wilhelm II had copied on the eve of the First World War. Nowadays, as MacGregor notes, it has become a symbol of friendship between France and Germany, each of which has claimed to be Charlemagne’s true heir. As we move through the ...”

“... to the CIA that employed a bevy of refugee leftist intellectuals like Marcuse, Franz Neumann, Otto Kirkheimer and Paul Baran. Recent books include poignant accounts like Gabrielle Edgcomb’s From Swastika to Jim Crow, about the sixty-odd German Jewish professors who found refuge at black colleges in the American South. According to Claus-Dieter Krohn, a ...”

“... his attitudes to various composers, to recording, aspects of his life and so forth. Not until Otto Friedrich’s Glenn Gould: A Lift and Variations (reviewed in the LRB, 26 March 1992) was published with the co-operation of Gould’s estate was there enough raw information about the details of the pianist’s quite amazing eccentricities. ...”

“... an Austrian physicist working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, persuaded her colleague Otto Hahn, a radiochemist, to join her in a further study of these ‘transuranic’ elements. They collaborated until Austria’s occupation by German troops in March 1938 robbed Lise Meitner of her protection from anti-Jewish persecution and caused her to flee ...”

“... patronage on which he depended (there are accounts here of the generosity of the Ritter family, of Otto Wesendonck, of the Princess Metternich, of Count Hatzfeld). Patronage was unreliable, and humiliating because of the degree of personal dependence it implied. At first Wagner played the game according to the traditional rules: from Riga he wrote to Meyerbeer ...”

“... and rackety. He had nothing to do with any artistic grouping or individual. (In this he resembles Otto Dix – maybe it’s all German solitudinarianism, out of Nietzsche or Caspar David Friedrich.) His boldly outlined conical or tubular forms, unconventional colour balances and bright, acidic palettes stand out ...”

“... hope of bringing industry under political control and getting rid of ‘haggling’ (Schacher). Friedrich Engels was more specific, asserting in 1878 that socialism would eliminate the ‘social anarchy’ of capitalist free markets by delivering ‘social regulation of production upon a definite plan’. Forty years later Lenin promised to rejuvenate ...”

“... simultaneous ubiquity and banality of Wagnerism.Wagner’s most fervent acolyte and antagonist was Friedrich Nietzsche. After their first meeting in November 1868, Nietzsche wrote of his exhilaration at this ‘fabulously lively and fiery man, who speaks very rapidly, [and] is very funny’. For his part, Wagner, then aged 55, seems to have been rejuvenated by ...”

“... the Wonderland of Technology’) describes the hugely popular cult of dam-building, led by Otto Intze, ‘Grand Master of German Dams’, intended to provide drinking water for the growing cities, to fill the new canal network, to control river flooding by barrages on the headwaters (a conspicuous failure in the long term) and – later – to provide ...”

“... Bauhaus, Itten had originally been a primary schoolteacher. He introduced some of the theories of Friedrich Froebel – the founder of the Kindergarten movement, who pioneered the use of educational toys – and encouraged his students to reconnect with their inner child. At the start of one term Itten told them that they would be making games for the next ...”