The Conquest of Ruins: The Third Reich and the Fall of Rome

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The Roman Empire has been a source of inspiration and a model for imitation for Western empires practically since the moment Rome fell. Yet, as Julia Hell shows in The Conquest of Ruins, what has had the strongest grip on aspiring imperial imaginations isn&;t that empire&;s glory but its fall&;and the haunting monuments left in its wake. Hell examines centuries of European empire-building&;from Charles V in the sixteenth century and Napoleon&;s campaigns of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries to the atrocities of Mussolini and the Third Reich in the 1930s and &;40s&;and sees a similar fascination with recreating the Roman past in the contemporary image. In every case&;particularly that of the Nazi regime&;the ruins of Rome seem to represent a mystery to be solved: how could an empire so powerful be brought so low? Hell argues that this fascination with the ruins of greatness expresses a need on the part of would-be conquerors to find something to ward off a similar demise for their particular empire.   Contents Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: Neo-Roman Mimesis and the Law of Ruin Part One. After Carthage: The Roman Empire and Its Ruins Preface 1. In the Rubble of Carthage: Polybios’s Histories and the Time That Remains 2. Building the Roman Stage: The Scenographic Architecture of the Augustan Era 3. Virgil’s Imperial Epic and Lucan’s Pharsalia, or the Specter of Hannibal and the Ruins of Rome 4. The Ruins of the Conquered: Josephus’s Jewish War and Pausanias’s Periegesis 5. Rubble, Ruins, and the Time before the End: Paul, Tertullian, and the Roman Empire as Katechon Part Two. Neo-Roman Mimesis: Charles V at Tunis, 1535 Preface 6. “The Imagoes They Leave Behind”: Charles’s Death Masks and the Desire of the Past Part Three. Neo-Roman Mimesis in the Modern Age: Cook’s Second Voyage to the South Pacific and the French Conquest of Egypt and Algeria Preface 7. Against Neo-Roman Mimesis: Johann Gottfried Herder at Carthage and François de Volney at Palmyra 8. Edward Gibbon and the Secret of Empire, or Scipio Africanus and the Savages of the South Pacific 9. Aeneas Fragment and the Enigma of the End: Georg Forster’s Voyage to the South Pacific and William Hodges’s Views of the Monuments of Easter Island 10. Caught Up in “Eternal Repetitions”: Napoleon in Egypt and Rome 11. Repetition of a Repetition: The Conquest of Algeria, and Louis Bertrand’s North African Latinité 12. Maori in Europe: Ruin Gazing and Scopic Mastery Part Four. From Germany’s Anti- Napoleonic Barbarians to the Ruin Gazer Scenarios of the Conservative Revolution Preface 13. Anti-Roman Barbarians: Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Heinrich von Kleist, C. D. Friedrich, and the Fight against Napoleon in the Ruins of Germania 14. The Second German Reich: The Struggle for Rome, or Barbarians Becoming Romans 15. Friedrich Nietzsche’s Modernist Mimesis and Gradiva’s Splendid Act of Imitation 16. Empires, Ruins, and the Conservative Critique of Modernity: Friedrich Ratzel and Oswald Spengler Part Five. With the End in Mind: The Nazi Empire’s Neo-Roman Mimesis and the Ruined Stage of Rome Preface 17. Hitler in Rome 1: Visiting the Mostra Augustea della Romanità, 1938 18. Roman Lessons: Theorizing Empire, Conquering the East 19. Creating the Twilight Zone of the Third Reich’s Neo- Roman Imaginary: German Classicists, Resurrectional Performances, and the Trope of the Neo-Roman Conqueror’s Fortified Gaze 20. Resurrections in a Modernist Mode: Greeks, Spartans, and Wild Savages, or, the Restoration of Civilization’s Shattered Gaze 21. Berlin/Germania: Seeing with Roman Eyes, Building a Roman Stage 22. Hitler in Rome 2: The Führer as Ruin Gazer, 1938 23. Return to Carthage, or Hitler’s Aeneas/Dido Fragment Part Six. Romans or Greeks? Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger Preface 24. Katechon: Carl Schmitt’s Theology of Empire 25. Empire and Time: Martin Heidegger’s Anti-Roman Intervention Epilogue: Anselm Kiefer’s Zersetzungen/Disarticulations Notes Bibliography Index