Explores German engagement with the Italian Renaissance in the decades from German unification to the Weimar republic.

Martin A. Ruehl is Lecturer in German intellectual history at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and a Fellow of Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge. His publications include Quentin Skinner: Visionen des Politischen (2009, edited with M. Heinz), A Poet's Reich: Politics and Culture in the George Circle (2011, edited with M. Lane), and Hitler - Films from Germany: History, Cinema and Politics since 1945 (2012, edited with K. Machtans).

List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction: Quattrocento Florence and what it means to be modern; 2. Ruthless Renaissance: Burckhardt, Nietzsche and the violent birth of the modern self; 3. Death in Florence: Thomas Mann and the ideologies of Renaissancismus; 4. 'The first modern man on the throne': Reich, race and rule in Ernst Kantorowicz's Frederick the Second; 5. The Renaissance reclaimed: Hans Baron's case for Bürgerhumanismus; 6. Conclusion: the waning of the Renaissance - death and afterlife of an idea; Bibliography; Index.