In the shadow of catastrophe

the long version

In this volume, Anson Rabinbach, an eminent intellectual and cultural historian, addresses the writings of some of the central figures in twentieth-century German thought. Rabinbach begins with a wide-ranging introduction, in which he discusses the intimate connection between apocalypse and twentieth-century German philosophy and compares the two postwar periods. He then goes on to show how diverse were the German intellectuals in their response to and understanding of catastrophe in their postwar writings.