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The wide-ranging fascination with India in Wilhelmine Germany emerged during a time of extraordinary cultural and political tensions. This study shows how religious (denominational and spiritual) dilemmas, political agendas, and shifting social consensus became inextricably entangled in the wider German encounter with India during the Kaiserreich.

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PART I: PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC CHAMPIONS AND THEIR VISIONS OF INDIA 1. Restoring Spirituality: Buddhism and Building a Protestant Nation 2. Catholic Visions of India and Universal Mandates: Commandeering the Nation State PART II: BREAKING OUT OF THE IRON CAGE: FRINGE RELIGIOUS INNOVATORS AND THEIR DETRACTORS 3. Responding to Science and Materialism: Buddhism and Theosophy 4. Buddhism´s Catholic and Protestant Detractors PART III: THE RADICALIZATION OF GERMANY´S INDIA 5. Ambivalent Visions of the British Raj: Spirituality and Germany´s Colonial Champions 6. Prescriptive History and the Radicalization of Community-Building

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"Myers´s work adds to a large body of studies that explore the Western construction of India, with no shortage among them examining ´Germany´s India.´ ... This book is highly recommended for advanced students and working scholars with a deep interest in German Indology and Germanic cross-cultural studies." (Herman Tull, Religious Studies Review, Vol. 41 (3), September, 2015)

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Perry Myers is Associate Professor of German Studies at Albion College in Michigan, USA. His publications include The Double Edged Sword: The Cult of Bildung, Its Downfall and Reconstitution in Fin-de-Siècle Germany (Rudolf Steiner and Max Weber) (2004) and articles on various literary topics such as Ludwig Tieck´s gestiefelter Kater, Thomas Mann´s Fiorenza, and Waldemar Bonsels´ Indienfahrt, as well as numerous essays on travelers to India (Ernst Haeckel, Joseph Dahlmann and others) during the Wilhelmine era.

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