Combining the history of ideas, institutions, and architecture, this study shows how the museum both reflected and shaped the place of art in German culture from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. On a broader level, it illuminates the origin and character of the museum's central role in modern culture.
James Sheehan begins by describing the establishment of the first public galleries during the last decades of Germany's old regime. He then examines the revolutionary upheaval that swept Germany between 1789 and 1815, arguing that the first great German museums...

This volume in the Oxford History of Modern Europe is a comprehensive study of German history from 1770 to 1866. It examines the manner in which the development of bureaucratic and participatory institutions changed the character and capacities of governments throughout German Europe; the economic expansion in which the productivity of both agriculture and manufacturing increased, commercial activity intensified, and urban growth was encouraged; and the rising culture of print, which sustained new developments in literature, philosophy, and scholarship, and helped transform the rules...