In the spirit of the comparatist Peter Heller, to whom this book is dedicated, twenty-three leading scholars from various disciplines explore the modern crisis consciousness, its origins in 'Romantic' Germany, and its rich though troubled cultural harvest. An ever-shifting crisis is the result of the new spirit of subjective individualism confronting the old rational and social orders. As these essays demonstrate, the contradictional dynamics of enlightenment and irrationalism inspired the course and the manifestations of German culture, from Klopstock to the 'Historikerstreit' of very recent history. Co-published with the McMaster Colloquium on German Literature, Art and Thought.