Cameralism in Practice is marked by a deliberate effort to shift our attention away from the work of writers to the activities of those more directly concerned in the daily tasks of economic administration, whether of state properties, royal domains, forests or manufactures. The handbooks and treatises produced in the German-speaking universities of the eighteenth century direct themselves to the organisation of these economic domains, and so they have in the past often been read as in some way reflecting actual administrative activity. There are two linked problems in this. First, as a literature of pedagogy, the burgeoning field of the Kameralwissenschaften had a strongly normative cast, rather than a purely descriptive function; second, the dynamics of the production of this literature are related not primarily to the presence or absence or priority of administrative issues, but instead to the institutional demands of teaching. The substance of the Kameralwissenschaften thus lends us no direct insight into the work of administration, nor do changes in the rate of production of such texts directly indicate anything about issues of reform or reorganisation in office and treasury.

All the same, it remains true that, as a genre, the Kameralwissenschaften had a profile consistently distinct from contemporary economic literature in Britain and France, and to a lesser degree Italy. A body of writing named after the Kammer in which court officials oversaw domain economies, and originally a literature of counsel for the best conduct of such economies, in the course of the early eighteenth century this became incorporated into the teaching of universities; and while the idea that this new body of knowledge should become part of the training of state officials, this was always much more aspiration than reality. As a result, the Kameralwissenschaften claimed a relationship to administrative practice that only existed insofar as its practitioners, at least in its early years, did have some relevant administrative experience. There was certainly a link to ‘practice’, but it was more personal than discursive.

EARLIER BOOKS OF MINE have explored cultural aspects of the end of human life. But what if there were no such end, no death? How would we see ourselves then? One way of forming an image of ourselves is an imaginative inquiry into what we are not, or cannot be. Philosophers have known this all along: to understand the significance of something, they experiment with the thought that it does not exist—what would follow? Human mortality is a case in point. In cultural history, and in literature in particular, there is a long-standing tradition of endeavoring to come to terms with the finite nature of human life by speculating about what immortality, life without end in “this world,” might be like. “We will know less and less what it means to be human,” claims the epigraph with which the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago introduced his novel As Intermitências da Morte (2005; Death at Intervals, 2008), which attempted to answer the implied question or challenge by engaging in the very serious jeu d'esprit of imagining life without death: what would happen if life were “eternal” in the here and now of a small European country at the turn of the millennium?

“Time without Death” (as the title of the German translation by Marianne Gareis has it) does not last “forever” in Saramago's thought experiment, but only some seven months. Even so, the “catastrophic” social and existential disturbances it arouses in public and private life last long enough to let people of all stripes breathe a deep sigh of relief when the contretemps has finally passed and the rule of death is reinstated. However, as their lives return to normal, they are no longer the same. Living through a period of deathlessness has taught them something about themselves as ordinary mortals. But what?

Answers are suggested by literary works of the Western tradition that focus on the theme of life without end, be it the life of an individual, or a group of individuals, or an entire population. In what follows, key works of this kind are examined, not chronologically but thematically. In this manner, works of very different authors, epochs, and cultural contexts may be invited into a conversation with each other that may reveal significant variations and similarities of human self-awareness across the cultural history of the last three centuries.

In the final scene of Maurice Baring's play, The Black Prince, a dying Edward contemplates his legacy as a warrior. Rather than focus on Edward's earlier victories, the play explores his later life, marred by a lingering illness which affected his ability to wage war and led to the loss of French territories. Baring wrote The Black Prince during the South African War, a period when Britain's lack of efficiency was linked to a perceived endemic weakness in the population that made them militarily inept. In the play, Edward reflects on the transience of victory, but he consoles himself with the knowledge that his military triumphs at Crécy, Poitiers and Nájera may still provide inspiration for future soldiers. Memory and reputation, anxiety and hope, victory and tragedy were all central themes in Baring's work.

From the latter half of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, the Black Prince and his late medieval battles became part of a wider reimagining of the British as a martial people. In the late Middle Ages, Edward's victories at Crécy and Poitiers were celebrated in chronicles and poetry, and the prince was depicted as the epitome of European heroic knighthood. While antiquarians and biographers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries emphasised Edward's prowess as a warrior, it was not until the eighteenth century that popular interest in his battles reached its height amidst growing tension with France, burgeoning nationalism and more conscious empire building. Here, the construction of the late medieval past as a warlike age and the reworking of Edward's battles as part of a longer national struggle became embedded in a story of British triumph and success. The Black Prince's chivalric and princely approach to battle proved to be inspirational.

This chapter begins by exploring the revival of interest in Edward's martial story in the period 1750 to 1830. Edward's image as a war leader as it developed in the eighteenth century highlighted how aristocrats, gentlemen, antiquarians and biographers used Edward's medieval victories to promote their vision of the British as a martial people.

Albrechtsberger, Johann Georg (1736–1809). Austrian theorist, composer, and teacher of some of the most highly respected musicians of the age, including Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Ignaz Moscheles, Anton Reicha, Josef Weigl, and Beethoven. Having turned to Albrechtsberger for lessons in counterpoint following Haydn's departure for London at the start of 1794, Beethoven continued his studies with the noted pedagogue for about a year and a half.

Amenda, Karl (1771–1836). Violinist and theologian. Despite the brevity of his time in Vienna (1798–99), Amenda became one of Beethoven's closest companions and was among the earliest to learn of the composer's encroaching deafness. Beethoven gave Amenda an early version of his first string quartet, Op. 18 No. 1, though after substantive revisions and admitting that he had only ‘now learned to write quartets’, Beethoven asked that it not be circulated, a request Amenda honored.

Artaria, Carlo (1747–1808). Mapmaker and among the foremost European publishers of engraved music from 1778. Founded in Mainz in 1756, Artaria's firm moved to Vienna in 1770, where it served as Mozart's major publisher (releasing some forty-five works during the composer's lifetime), represented Haydn (publishing over three hundred works), and was among the first houses to do business with the young Beethoven. After 1804, the firm passed to Domenico Artaria (1775–1842), who continued to represent Beethoven, among others.

Braun, Josephine, Baroness, née von Högelmüller (1765–1838). Dedicatee of Beethoven's Horn Sonata Op. 17 and the two Piano Sonatas Op. 14, in addition to an arrangement for string quartet of Op. 14 No. 1. Josephine was the wife of Peter Anton Braun, who leased and managed Vienna's two court theaters, the Kärntnertortheater and Burgtheater, and in 1804 became owner of the Theater an der Wien. Thus, dedications to the Brauns were probably driven as much by political as by personal reasons.

Breitkopf & Härtel. See Härtel.

Breuning, Stephan von (1774–1827). Breuning, whose family was well known to Beethoven's in Bonn, enjoyed one of the longest-lasting friendships with Beethoven. Their relationship was renewed when Breuning moved to Vienna in 1801; though it experienced the inevitable falling-out that marred many of the composer's relationships, the two warmly reconciled. Employed by the war ministry of Vienna, Breuning revised the original libretto of Fidelio and, perhaps as a consequence, received the dedication of the Violin Concerto.

These sentences from the first page of Thornton Wilder's famous novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey describe the feelings of many people in early modern times towards epidemics or natural catastrophes. It does not matter for us that the novel takes place in South America in 1714, because misfortunes and perils like diseases, city fires, and last but not least natural hazards were quite common for the majority of people in Europe too. Until the eighteenth century these phenomena were often interpreted as divine retribution for earthly sin. Only prayer and penitence were seen as acceptable coping strategies, as this was the only way of finding reconciliation with God.

However, there is evidence that these perceptions changed as a result of the Enlightenment – which ‘was in part heir to the great “scientific revolution” of the previous century but [was] also a sign of a new cosmopolitanism’ – and scientific progress during the eighteenth century. Demystification of the ‘wrath of God’ resulted. Nonetheless, we cannot tell how quickly the majority of the population was able to adopt this paradigm shift. Yet with the almost complete disappearance of metaphysical ideals, new adaptation strategies had to be found – last but not least, by the early modern state. In German-speaking countries it was the task of the cameralists to discover practical solutions.

This essay therefore examines an economic phenomenon not automatically associated with cameralism: insurance. At first sight this may seem surprising, as insurance is a key element of modern life. However, insurance concepts were already of importance in the early modern period, because – as Keith Thomas rightly pointed out – ‘nothing yields greater testimony to the new spirit of self-help than the growth of insurance’.

IN 2005, NIKLAS FRANK PUBLISHED a vitriolic act of narrative reckoning, Meine deutsche Mutter (My German Mother, 2005). Using family letters and diaries, he reconstructed the life of his mother, Brigitte Frank, the wife of Hitler's governor-general in Nazi-occupied Poland. The author excoriates his mother for her heartlessness, opportunism, and utter disinterest in the political iniquity that facilitated her lavish lifestyle. In the epilogue to his book, Frank broadens his gaze, venting his bile at an entire generation of German women:

Frank impugns the images of women that populate the cultural memory of the Second World War. If women are not remembered primarily as victims of war, he asserts, they are imagined as post hoc redeemers of the nation, as the Trümmerfrauen (rubble women) who helped to rebuild Germany brick-by-brick. This book explores why women's complicity in the Third Reich struggled to capture the cultural imagination in the same way. Until the rise of social history in the 1960s, historical accounts of Nazism and its roots focused on men and totalitarian structures. The new approach to historiography shifted attention away from the traditional subjects of historical research (foreign and military policy) to everyday life in the Third Reich. At this time, National Socialism was broadly understood as “the ultimate in male chauvinism”—in ideology if not in practice.

Overview: The Many Faces of Immortality

WHAT IF …?” Literary works fascinated or troubled by the idea of life without end are driven by this question. For three centuries at least, ever since the large-scale emancipation from theological authority, such works, rooted in various contexts of intellectual history, have suggested a wide variety of answers, and they continue to do so. Their authors are concerned, in one form or another, with the cognitive potential of reasoned imagination, the “imaginación razonada” that Jorge Luis Borges, in his preface to Adolfo Bioy Casares's novel on the theme of immortality, La invención de Morel, declared to be the prerogative of literary writers. The considerable diversity of their answers to the “what if …?” question does, however, tend to be more confusing than illuminating, at least at first glance. A less bewildering overview may emerge if one selects the works most relevant to the implied condition humaine and arranges them in a coherent spectrum of intellectual and emotional reactions to the fictional experience of immortality in “this world.”

Only rarely do novels or plays offer undiluted euphoria about everlasting life in those earthly paradises that “immortalist” theoreticians have extrapolated from science. This is hardly surprising when one recalls that throughout the nineteenth century writers like Atterbom, Morris, and Yeats had demonstrated that such Edens were deceptive: unlivable in the long term, so that their denizens would sooner or later decide to leave and thereby renounce their immortality (see pp. 31–32). But these writers did not speak for all dramatists and novelists who took up the theme of life without death, least of all those who ruled out the option of a return to mortality. J. M. Barrie, Italo Calvino, and G. B. Shaw managed to perceive enduring positive and even alluring facets of immortality in their works on the subject—without entirely downplaying its drawbacks.

TRANSLATION HAS TRADITIONALLY been divided into two types: that on a spatial axis, from one language to another, and that on a chronological axis, within one language of different periods. In contrast to cross-lingual translations, which have been thoroughly analysed, defined and exemplified, the complexities of translation between historical stages of the same language have not yet received enough scholarly attention. Diachronic translation presupposes translation into the same language but of a later period. It might seem at first sight that translations of Old English poetry into Modern English belong to the sphere of diachronic translation, especially if we take into account the historical identity of the language of the original and the translation.

Diachronic translation implies not only the identity of the language of the original text and the translation but also the identity of the poetic systems of both texts with all their phonetic, prosodic, metrical, lexical, grammatical and syntactic constituents. However, looking at Old English and Modern English poetic systems, it is impossible not to notice that Old English alliterative verse and Modern English accentual-syllabic verse derive from different roots and are thus historically dissimilar. Alliterative verse, as is well known, did not survive the Norman Conquest, when not only extra-linguistic (the break in the literary tradition) but also linguistic changes put an end to the old poetic tradition. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries attempts were made to revive alliterative verse, but by the end of the fourteenth century it was forever ousted by accentual-syllabic verse which was confirmed by acquaintance with French and Italian poetic systems. The history of English verse begins anew, and it is Middle English poetics that serve as the basis of its development.

In contrast to modern syllabic-tonic versification, Old English alliterative verse is characterised by a tight unity of verse and language. If in modern poetic texts the form is to some extent extrinsic to the language, in alliterative verse the two are indivisible. Alliterative technique does not deform the language but moulds it in a special way, so that not only is the language organised by the alliterative verse, but the verse requires particular linguistic conditions.

It was infinitely full, and the trio as well as the quartet in particular were very much applauded; it also went together very well and Linke played better than ever. It was too crowded to hear much; but this much I did hear, that many passages were accompanied by exclamations, and upon leaving many people spoke of the beauty of the new quartet. For this reason Schuppanzigh wants to play it again in 14 days.

Viennese critics expressed their views powerfully, but Viennese audiences had the first say. Lively, loquacious audiences feature prominently in this report from the Schuppanzigh Quartet's second violinist Holz. The occasion was the 1825 premiere of Beethoven's String Quartet in A minor Op. 132. Such behaviour from an audience might seem out of place according to the standards of silence and decorum at concerts of classical music today. It leads us to wonder how common this kind of response was, which passages were the most acclaimed, and why this audience reacted in this way. To answer these questions, we need to think about who formed the audience at Viennese chamber music concerts, both private and more public, and what kinds of listening experiences they may have had.

The case of the Viennese string quartet in the early nineteenth century is instructive for the history of listening. It exhibits an early, determined attempt by certain performers, composers, and critics to shift audience behaviour and listening practices towards silent, detached, reverent contemplation. This effort will be seen to have failed at least partially, since audiences persisted in more interactive ways of listening. However, the ideological seeds of silent listening were sown, and Viennese chamber music would provide fertile ground for ‘reforming’ listeners, as it came to be perceived at least by some of those involved. First, though, it is helpful to set Holz's comments in the broader context of nineteenth-century listening practice, which means considering an on-going debate over the nature of ‘period’ listening.

Did they Listen in the Early Nineteenth Century?

Scholars who study listening practices are united in the view that the nineteenth century witnessed a fundamental change in the character of listening.

The relatively low visibility of popular radical organisations at Bristol in the decade following the French Revolution has led historians of the city to conclude there was little support for them. Mark Harrison, for example, notes that although the ‘public expression of loyalism was abundant’ in a welter of anti-Jacobin addresses forwarded by the corporation to the throne, the radicalism to which it was opposed remained ‘spectacularly absent’. It is not easy to disagree. Compared to well-known radical centres in smaller towns, like Norwich, Sheffield and Manchester, Bristol appears disproportionately quiet. For an explanation we may look partly towards the familiar arguments about the city's introspective concern with its own civic affairs, where issues over corruption and accountability in a relatively open electoral franchise centred more readily on the exclusive activities of the corporation. In these years, the corporation, its merchant allies and the political elite attracted more hostile public attention than ever before through their energetic attempts to further increase their own executive and judicial powers and to control the election of the city's representatives, nullifying the impact of the city's generous freeman franchise.

It is certainly no coincidence that in 1790, at the first English general election after the fall of the Bastille, a challenge was launched at Bristol against the by now customary pact agreed by the Tory candidate, the Marquis of Worcester, and the Whig candidate, Lord Sheffield. The Reverend Edward Barry revived the city's Independent Society of Freemen, claimed he had attracted 1500 men to join him, and called for a third independent candidate to step forward to uphold the right of election. ‘It was neither men nor party they assembled for’, declared Barry, ‘but the CAUSE; to protect their common rights’. A candidate was duly found in the merchant David Lewis, but the opening days of the poll were not encouraging and Lewis withdrew with just twelve votes to his name. With the remaining two candidates elected and chaired, Lewis, who according to the local press could have ‘nothing to complain of but the perfidy of his promising friends’, made his way to the Bush and consoled himself over dinner with Sheffield and the Whigs. Barry blamed Lewis for not trying hard enough, and Lewis blamed Barry for falsely claiming he had 1500 freemen ready to cast an independent vote.

INGEBORG BACHMANN's Malina is a classic text of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming-to-terms with the past). The bestselling novel relates one woman's anxious struggle to survive in a world that suppresses all knowledge of violence past and present. The history of National Socialism suffuses the novel as a nightmare not yet over. In her dreams, the narrator is tormented by a brutal father figure whose Nazi appurtenances signal the political and historical dimensions of her suffering. In one of her most quoted statements, Bachmann explains that the dreams reveal the interpersonal origins of fascism. In her view, “der Faschismus ist das erste in der Beziehung zwischen einem Mann und einer Frau” (fascism is the first thing in the relationship between a man and a woman). It would be hard to find a more fitting quotation to open the first section of this book, which examines assumptions about the links between masculinity, patriarchy, and fascism that became entrenched in the 1960s.

As part of the nominal Todesarten (Ways of Dying) cycle on which the Austrian author worked from 1962 until her death in 1973, the genesis of Malina ran parallel to events such as the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials (1963–65) and the student protests in 1968 that brought previously suppressed questions of historical continuity and individual guilt to the forefront of the public consciousness. Elke Schlinsog has shown that the Todesarten-project entered a new phase when Bachmann moved to Berlin in April 1963 to take up a scholarship from the American Ford Foundation. The author's time in Berlin refined and radicalized her perception of postwar society's failure to confront openly the horror and legacy of war. Since the publication of Sigrid Weigel's intellectual biography, Hinterlassenschaften unter Wahrung des Briefgeheimnisses (Legacies under the Protection of the Secrecy of Correspondence, 1999), critics have especially emphasized the significance of Bachmann's contact with members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory for her understanding of society. In his influential lecture “Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit?” (“What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?,” 1959), Theodor Adorno famously warned, “dass der Faschismus nachlebt; dass die vielzitierte Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit bis heute nicht gelang und zu ihrem Zerrbild, dem leeren und kalten Vergessen, ausartete” (that fascism survives; that the oft-cited process of working through the past has not occurred yet and has degenerated into its caricature, empty and cold oblivion).

The Bristol riots hit the news. Detailed reports of the riots were blazoned in the press, in London, Dublin, Edinburgh, and in many provincial towns in England. As part of the reform crisis a lot was at stake in how the riots were interpreted. They became something of a litmus test of reform. For Blackwood's Magazine, an ultra-Tory monthly, the Bristol riots gave the public a ‘foretaste of democracy’. Extending the franchise would only result in more scenes of appalling degeneracy, scenes of deluded mobs and manipulative demagogues, whose real intent was revolution. For reformist newspapers, the lesson learned from the riots was the decadent state of local government in Bristol, emblematic of Old Corruption, a portrait of self-selected politicians irresponsibly clinging onto power and privilege in the face of public mistrust and resentment, allowing a turbulent but manageable crisis to spiral out of control. As we have seen, this opinion gathered force after the trial of Mayor Charles Pinney in November 1832, leading the Examiner to declare ‘let us set about municipal improvement with all the speed we may’. As the Reading Mercury opined a year earlier: ‘The great bulk of the inhabitants, including sensible persons of all parties, are sick of the self-elected system and anxious it should be abolished.’

For radical commentators the riots were regrettable because they would be used as a pretext for denying the vote to the bulk of the male population, keeping ‘all their fellow labourers in their present tyrannical subjection’. The real culprit, said the Poor Man's Guardian, was the local oligarchy, which had reduced offenders ‘to such a state of mental ignorance and degradation’. Francis Place believed the Bristol riots underscored the benumbing influences of religious prejudice and class on political consciousness. Church-and-King bigotry and ‘the contempt of all who are able to live without working for all who do work’ had rendered life brutish and miserable for the majority. Until there was some relief from the daily struggle for survival, which cramped people materially and intellectually, the degradations of a Bristol riot would continue.

In the larger scheme of things, the Bristol riots do pose some interesting questions for historians from below, if only because of the range of action they generated, from demonstrations for reform to scenes of spectacular vandalism and drunkenness.