...Joshua Derman Charisma , a buzzword beloved by sociologists, political scientists, psychologists, self-help gurus, and scholars of celebrity, is in its modern secular usage a concept of very recent origin. Between 1915 and 1922 the German scholar Max Weber introduced it into the vocabulary...

...C. Stephen Jaeger Critical theory has made little use of “aura” and virtually none of “charisma.” Drawing on passages from Homer and Marcel Proust, this article broadens the view of aura that has developed among Walter Benjamin and his commentators and adds to the view of Max Weber and his...

...Friedrich Balke At the end of book 1 of Ab urbe condita , Livy presents a paradigmatic case of an individual's rise to power and his ability to focus a community's actions and goals around himself. Analyzing the media and semiotic processes employed in this process, charisma can be described...

...Niels Werber The charisma of Ahab, captain of Herman Melville's famous whale-hunting vessel Pequod , is a well-established topic of inquiry in various disciplines. His charismatic leadership has been described with the help of Max Weber's Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft , deciphered as anticipating...

...Armin Schäfer In twentieth-century German literature, Alfred Döblin's novel The Three Leaps of Wang Lun is an outstanding example not only of the invention of a charismatic leader but also of an attempt to analyze those aspects of charisma that Max Weber did not want to touch on. Döblin saw...

...Eva Horn Recent biographies of Adolf Hitler's life, especially those by Joachim C. Fest, Ian Kershaw, and Ludolf Herbst, have referred extensively to Max Weber's concept of charisma. The article raises the question of what it means to narrate the charisma of a historical figure such as Adolf Hitler...

...Claudia Schmölders Despite the German obsession with physiognomics, no one appears ever to have discussed the omission of physical features from Max Weber's 1921 theory of charisma. Beginning around 1800 with Johann Caspar Lavater, a Swiss priest and a friend of Goethe, the practice of deducing...

...Eva Horn Max Weber's concept of charisma is notorious both in social theory and in cultural analysis. This article elaborates some of the complex and sometimes contradictory implications of Weber's term, especially its political, theological, and aesthetical aspects. His term must be seen...

... of the great leaders would fill only a small book, since they depend heavily on the dynamics of the crowd. Le Bon therefore did not simply aim to resurrect a classical notion of the leader but instead chose to write a manual for the statesman who, though lacking Napoléon’s charisma, had to appeal...

..., 1945–1949. 33. BA, SAPMO, DY/27-1477, Abteilung Presse und Funk, Kulturbund, Manuskripte 1946, File Lieselotte Thoms. 34. Ibid. Note the relation to “charisma” and “aura” theories since Max Weber; see Joshua Derman, “Max Weber and Charisma: A Transatlantic Affair,” New German Critique...

... discussed in public arenas. The public sphere is understood as a medium that binds modern societies together beyond all differences. The classics of sociological theory have conceptual- ized this phenomenon under different headings: Karl Marx’s “ideology,” Max Weber’s “ideas, charisma, and common...

... and won- der necessary to project charisma on the master. But even if true, are these musings really obstacles? Is Jacques Lacan or Deleuze easier to read? Do Alain Badiou’s mathematics make sense? Is having “a revolutionary past” a neces- sary visa allowing entry? Is the linguistic turn gone...

... Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl— the Final Days [2005 Diehl, one of the strongest and most striking Ger- man actors of his generation, invests the role with all his charisma and moves away from the cinematic stereotype of the Nazi thug. Schlöndorff deliberately sought a young and attractive actor...

... is to be rather than, as with examples, fulfi lling a blueprint determined independently of them. Equally, exemplarity is what establishes the charismatic authority of a complex concept” (ADE, 345n12). But if “the darkness of our time” entails that Adorno’s specifi c exem- plary experience and charisma...

... the same role of a representative of the broad masses as Hitler and his movement. 19. See Plöckinger, Geschichte eines Buches, 121–53. 20. “The “oratorical style of the book was evidently introduced only after the fact” (ibid., 72). 21. This disproves the legend of Hitler’s originary charisma...

... becomes a rivalry; the prophets claim no political power or even infl uence. They do not have a defi nite social background, nor do they repre- sent, despite their use of demagogy, the interests of the people. The charisma of the prophets, which is, in accordance with Weber’s Herr schafts soziologie...

..., Charisma, Group Psychology: Reflections on the Self-Analysis of Freud,” Psychological Issues 9, nos. 2–3 (1976): 379–425; and Robert Caper, “Group Psychology and the Psychoanalytic Group,” in Person, On Freud’s “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego,” 61–86. 19. This is the argument...

.... But the prophet lived until the exilic time in a self-understood unity. . . . However, at the moment when this togetherness collapsed, the critical prophet changed into a law-giver who also took care of cults and rites. . . . If prophetic charisma fails, one should consider pro- ceeding...

... the weekly gatherings of the Philosophische Gruppe, where Unger would hold forth on the current topics of the day. These gatherings were attended by nearly all of Berlin’s notable artists and intellectuals, from Alfred Döblin to Carl Schmitt. Although reactions to Goldberg’s charisma and his revolutionary...

... charisma notwithstanding, Lecter is unmistakably an abhorrent criminal. In the novel and the 1991 movie, he is depicted as a monster, and his cannibalism is presented as a horrific crime. 51 In the novel Harris does not describe him as “sexy” or handsome: he appears “small” and “sleek.” 52...