(A new view of the years of Prussian reform is presented h...)
A new view of the years of Prussian reform is presented here, showing the military impact of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France on Prussia, the nature of the challenge, the efforts of Prussian institutions and society to master the new situation, the obstacles and changes.
Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories and His Times
(Clausewitz and the State presents a comprehensive analysi...)
Clausewitz and the State presents a comprehensive analysis of one of the significant thinkers of modern Europe. Peter Paret combines social and military history and psychological interpretation with a study of Clausewitz's military theories and of his unduly neglected historical and political writing.
Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age
(The essays in this volume analyze war, its strategic char...)
The essays in this volume analyze war, its strategic characterisitics and its political and social functions over the past five centuries. The diversity of its themes and the broad perspectives applied to them make the book a work of general history as much as a history of the theory and practice of war from the Renaissance to the present.
(The book spans fifty years of German history, from the ri...)
The book spans fifty years of German history, from the rise of liberalism in the 1830s to the Franco-Prussian War, German unification and the fading of liberalism in the new empire. Each chapter treats one or more works of art or literature and links the background, creation and impact of these works to the politics of the time.
(These essays provide an authoritative introduction to Car...)
These essays provide an authoritative introduction to Carl von Clausewitz and enlarge the history of war by joining it to the history of ideas and institutions and linking it with intellectual biography.
(In this companion volume to On War, the editors bring tog...)
In this companion volume to On War, the editors bring together Clausewitz's political writings and a selection of his historical works - material that is fascinating in its own right, important as a commentary on his theories of war and a valuable source for understanding European ideas and attitudes during and after the Napoleonic era.
Persuasive Images: Posters of War and Revolution from the Hoover Archives
(With powerful, often shocking immediacy, the 317 posters ...)
With powerful, often shocking immediacy, the 317 posters reproduced and discussed in this volume document the political and military conflicts of our century. These works reveal their meaning most clearly when we do not relegate them to the function of illustrating a text or see them merely as specimens of the applied arts, but take them seriously as unique combinations of historical witness and aesthetic object.
Imagined Battles: Reflections of War in European Art
(For thousands of years, art has interpreted the experienc...)
For thousands of years, art has interpreted the experience of war - its methods, human costs and moral ambiguities - and has offered historians a wealth of testimony that is only beginning to be systematically explored. In this wide-ranging study, Peter Paret discusses forty-seven paintings and prints as complex documents of war in Europe since the Renaissance and as examples of the artist's use of war as a metaphor for the human condition. The images include works by such major artists as Uccello, Gericault and Dix as well as academic history paintings and popular prints.
(In German Encounters with Modernism, Peter Paret traces t...)
In German Encounters with Modernism, Peter Paret traces the reception of modern art, from the 1840s through the Nazi era, through the lens of social and political developments in Germany. Addressing broad cultural topics, such as the early history of Expressionism, the role of anti-Semitism in German reactions to modernism and the impact of World War I on the arts, he also includes new interpretations of the work of artists such as the sculptor Ernst Barlach. Based on new archival discoveries, this study combines a strong narrative approach with interdisciplinary analysis.
(The conflict between National Socialism and Ernst Barlach...)
The conflict between National Socialism and Ernst Barlach, one of the important sculptors of the twentieth century, is an unusual episode in the history of Hitler's efforts to rid Germany of 'international modernism.' Barlach did not passively accept the destruction of his sculptures, but protested the injustice and continued his work. Peter Paret's discussion of Barlach's art and struggle over creative freedom is joined to an analysis of Barlach's opponents.
(Responding to the enemy's innovation in war presents prob...)
Responding to the enemy's innovation in war presents problems to soldiers and societies of all times. This book traces Napoleon's victory over Prussia in 1806 and Prussia's effort to recover from defeat to show how in one particular historical episode operational analyses together with institutional and political decisions eventually turned defeat to victory.
Myth and Modernity: Barlach's Drawings on the Nibelungen
(This book discusses the epic and its course through Germa...)
This book discusses the epic and its course through German history, the artist's biography and the course of his work, as well as the place the drawings occupy in the art, culture and politics of Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and beyond to the ideological and political crises of Central Europe before and after World War I.
Peter Paret is an American cultural and intellectual historian, educator and author. Peter Paret is a Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at the School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study, and Professor Emeritus of International History at Stanford University.
Background
Ethnicity:
Peter's father, Hans, descended from a French family, while his mother, Suzanne, came from a Jewish family.
Peter Paret was born on April 13, 1924 in Berlin, Germany, to Doctor Hans Paret and Suzanne Aimee Cassirer. Peter lived in Austria, France and England before coming to the United States in 1937.
Education
In 1943, Peter entered the University of California in Berkeley where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1949. He also studied at the University of London from 1956 to 1960 where he received a Doctor of Philosophy degree.
Also, Peter received several honorary doctorates from different educational establishments, including an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree from Humboldt University of Berlin, an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of South Carolina and others.
From 1959 to 1960, Paret was a resident tutor at the University of Oxford. He was a research associate at the Center of International Studies, Princeton University, where he spent two years. During this time, Paret, in collaboration with John W. Shy, wrote his first book, Guerrillas in the 1960s, a short work, analyzing the nature of irregular warfare and the difficulties it posed to modern, industrialized societies.
From 1962 to 1963, Paret was a visiting assistant professor at the University of California in Davis. From 1963 to 1966, he served as an associate professor of History, and then, from 1966 to 1969, he acted as a full professor of History there. During these years, he published a study of the modern French theory of political-military warfare, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria. In 1969, Paret was appointed a professor of History at Stanford University, and, in 1977, he became the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History there.
In 1976, he also published a biography, Clausewitz and the State, which has been translated into three languages. The same year the biography appeared, Michael Howard's and Paret's translation of Clausewitz's major theoretical work, On War, was published. Since 1980, when his study of modern art and its enemies in imperial Germany, The Berlin Secession, appeared, Paret has published several monographs and collections of essays on the history of art, three of which have been translated into German. In 1986, Paret became the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He retired in 1997. In 2008, he also was a lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, and served as a guest curator at Princeton University Art Museum in 2009. Currently, Paret continues to write, lecture and publish.
In his works, Paret examines the history and theory of guerilla warfare and concludes that the United States would have great difficulty in using guerillas to overthrow hostile governments. Paret's interest in military history emerged from his own military service in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Although he admittedly had a deep interest in literature and art, his service had left him with questions about how historians discussed warfare and how nations and citizens focused their energies towards military efforts. Towards that end, Paret's writing has always been characterized by its quest to understand the intricate web of actions and ideas that affect the military on and off the field of battle and to expand the definition of military history to examine its impacts on politics, society and art.
Paret's second major interest is the relationship between art, literature and society. In his 1980 work, The Berlin Secession: Modernism and Its Enemies in Imperial Germany, he examines the Berlin Secession, a movement of painters and sculptors who embraced modem art in opposition to the traditional ideology of the academy, and by extension against the intolerance of Emperor William II.
Membership
Peter was a member of the American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Leo Baeck Institute, London School of Economics and Society for Military History.
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