Defeated in World War I, living in a troubled and insecure peace, Germans under the Weimar Republic were a ready audience for fantasy writers who envisioned victorious wars of revenge or  German renewal through wondrous technology.   Largely ignored by the literary establishment, these writers created an immensely popular mass literature, the Zukunftsroman  (futuristic novel), that was a potent ingredient in the simmering stew of resentment, frustrated nationalism, political irrationalism, and economic distress underlying the Nazi rise to power.    In Fantasy and Politics Peter S. Fisher explores the popular culture of the Weimar Republic.  He identifies common motifs and themes in the work  of thirty fantasy novelists, sets them in the context of political events and ideas, and examines their popular influence.  German fantasy novels, he demonstrates,  provide invaluable perspectives on the ideological and psychological roots of the Weimar Republic’s highly emotionalized politics, especially some of its uglier racist and Messianic strands.    The Zukunftsroman was primarily the province of  German right-wing ultranationalists,  who were able to tap the emotional wellsprings of Weimar thought and fill the explosive spiritual vacuum at its core.  However, at the opposite end of the political spectrum, socialist visionaries either exhorted their readers to brace themselves for a final battle with capitalism or wrote pacifist warnings of the terrors of modern warfare.   The preference for the world of fantasy over reality, Fisher contends, was paralleled by an inclination to value action over thought and emotion over reason.   The Weimar Zukunftsroman, he concludes, reveals a cultural drift toward irrationalism that manifested itself politically in the call for dictatorship.

Fantasy and Politics: Visions of the Future in the Weimar Republic

Literature & Fiction

Fisher, Peter S.

History & Criticism

University of Wisconsin Press

Defeated in World War I, living in a troubled and insecure peace, Germans under the Weimar Republic were a ready audience for fantasy writers who envisioned victorious wars of revenge or  German renewal through wondrous technology.   Largely ignored by the literary establishment, these writers created an immensely popular mass literature, the Zukunftsroman  (futuristic novel), that was a potent ingredient in the simmering stew of resentment, frustrated nationalism, political irrationalism, and economic distress underlying the Nazi rise to power.     In Fantasy and Politics, Peter S. Fisher explores the popular culture of the Weimar Republic.  He identifies common motifs and themes in the work  of thirty fantasy novelists, sets them in the context of political events and ideas, and examines their popular influence.  German fantasy novels, he demonstrates,  provide invaluable perspectives on the ideological and psychological roots of the Weimar Republic’s highly emotionalized politics, especially some of its uglier racist and Messianic strands.     The Zukunftsroman was primarily the province of  German right-wing ultranationalists,  who were able to tap the emotional wellsprings of Weimar thought and fill the explosive spiritual vacuum at its core.  However, at the opposite end of the political spectrum, socialist visionaries either exhorted their readers to brace themselves for a final battle with capitalism or wrote pacifist warnings of the terrors of modern warfare.   The preference for the world of fantasy over reality, Fisher contends, was paralleled by an inclination to value action over thought and emotion over reason.   The Weimar Zukunftsroman, he concludes, reveals a cultural drift toward irrationalism that manifested itself politically in the call for dictatorship.

A very timely book considering the economy today. Has the ability to move industry within our borders led to moving beyond our borders?

Industrial Incentives: Competition Among American Cities and States

Business & Money

Peters, Alan H.

Industries

W E Upjohn Inst for

Book by Fisher, Peter S., Peters, Alan H.

Marketing & Sales

State Enterprise Zone Programs: Have They Worked?

The variety of tax incentives offered in state enterprise zones (EZs) are generally viewed to be a cost-effective means of spurring business investment activity and for retaining or creating jobs. While thousands of state-sponsored zones now exist, controversy remains among those studying EZs about what the programs should be asked to achieve, what types of incentives are appropriate to the goals of EZs, and whether or not EZs are more effective at achieving investment and job growth in specific locations than other economic development tools available to state and local officials.  Jumping into the breach of these controversies are two noted professors of urban and regional planning, Alan H. Peters and Peter S. Fisher. In their new book, State Enterprise Zone Programs: Have They Worked?, Peters and Fisher evaluate 75 EZs located in 13 states to gain an understanding of the overall effectiveness of state enterprise zones. Faced with a paucity of data on EZs that could be used in standard economic analysis, the authors employ a hypothetical firm model in which they apply various EZ and non-EZ incentives to financial statements created for a set of "typical" firms. Observing the impacts of both types of incentives on firms' financial statements allow Peters and Fisher to predict the firms' resulting behavior. Between these findings and the data accumulated from actual EZs, they are able to offer insights on seven key policy issues:     1. What sort of business incentives are provided in EZs?    2. What is the size of these incentives and what is their relative importance compared to other state and local business incentives?    3. Do EZ incentives encourage business to use more labor than would otherwise be the case? More generally, what sort of investment do the incentives favor?    4. Do EZs make sound fiscal sense? In other words, are enterprise zone incentives likely to produce revenue gains or losses for state and local governments?    5. How much business turnover is typical in EZs?    6. Is there a "causal" relationship between EZ incentives and economic growth in enterprise zones? Do EZs create growth?    7. Do EZs draw their labor from poorer, more depressed parts of metropolitan areas?

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

Backbench Behind The Headlines

CopyRight Publishing Co P/L

In the Weimar Republic, popular culture was the scene of heated controversies that tested the limits of national cohesion. How could marginal figures like a stigmatized villager, a grub street writer, or an advocate for nudism become flashpoints of political conflict? Peter S. Fisher draws on Siegfried Kracauer's trenchant observations on Weimar's contradictions to knit these exemplary stories together. Following his methodology, society's underdogs take center stage, pushing the headline makers into the background.

Weimar Controversies: Explorations in Popular Culture with Siegfried Kracauer (Culture & Theory)

History

Europe

transcript publishing

Continually attacked by government officials and educators, installment or colportage novels fascinated their underprivileged readers. Melodrama and sensation were essential ingredients. The hurriedly written, rambling plots sought to electrify fantasies of women with new turn-of-the-century aspirations. They also fused raw political ideas offering populist and paternalist solutions to society's challenges and tensions. Through the study of one rare, surviving colportage novel, Peter S. Fisher offers an unusual mental and visual panorama of a nearly vanished Wilhelmine world.

Siegfried the Wrestler: The Wilhelmine World of a Colportage Novel (Lettre)

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fisher, Peter S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Fisher, Peter S.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fisher, Peter S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Fantasy and Politics: Visions of the Future in the Weimar Republic

Fantasy and Politics: Visions of the Future in the Weimar Republic

Industrial Incentives: Competition Among American Cities and States

Industrial Incentives: Competition Among American Cities and States

State Enterprise Zone Programs: Have They Worked?

Backbench Behind The Headlines

Weimar Controversies: Explorations in Popular Culture with Siegfried Kracauer (Culture & Theory)

Siegfried the Wrestler: The Wilhelmine World of a Colportage Novel (Lettre)