In the spirit of the comparatist, Peter Heller, to whom this book is dedicated, 23 leading scholars from various disciplines explore the modern crisis consciousness, its origins in Romantic Germany, and its rich though troubled cultural harvest. An evershifting crisis is the result of the new spirit of subjective individualism confronting the old rational and social orders. As these essays aim to 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.