On Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941, Indian poet.

This Commemorative Volume is being published by the Federation of Indo-German Societies in India (FIGS), New Delhi, in association with Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, Munich, to celebrate the 150th Birth Anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore received unprecedented welcome in Germany during his visits to that country in 1921, 1926 and 1930. The book is in three parts. The first part of this book entitled Rabindranath Tagore in Germany : A Cross Section of Contemporary Reports, edited and translated by Prof. Dietmar Rothermund, was first published in 1961 to celebrate Tagore's centenary by the Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi. The contributions by contemporary scholars and writers who came in contact with him at that time are not only interesting because of what they tell us about Tagore, but also illustrate contemporary German thought in its quest for new values and ideals. It ends with Tagore's poem in English, The Child, which he wrote in 1930 in Germany, that Prof. Rothermund describes as "a testimony of a sudden inspiration and a surprising vision". The second part carries an article entitled "Tagore and Germany" by Satinder Kumar Lambah, former Ambassador of India in Germany, first published by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations in the journal `Indien in der Gegenwart' in 1996. The author reviews Tagore's three visits to Germany, emphasizing the vitality of the cultural interaction that was set off by this "spiritual ambassador of India ... interpreting through his works and lectures the timeless message of an ancient country to a world that, in the wake of the First World War, was restless, confused and uncertain". The third part contains three essays on Rabindranath Tagore based on lectures delivered by Dr. Martin Kampchen in India and Bangladesh. Through his translations of Tagore's poetry, his biography of the poet in German and several studies on Tagore's relationship with Germany, the author has contributed substantially to introducing Tagore to a wider public.

In 1930, when Rabindranath Tagore met Paul and Edith Geheeb in Germany, they formed a fruitful and long-term association resulting in the exchange of ideas and vision. Tagore's Brahmacharya Ashram, founded in 1901 in Shantiniketan, and the Geheeb's Odenwaldschule, established in Germany in 1910 (thereafter the Ecole d'Humanité in Switzerland, established in 1934 after the couple fled Nazi Germany), emerged from vastly different cultural backgrounds and social exigencies. Yet, they recognized striking similarities between their educational endeavours. The meeting also initiated a close association between India and Germany, with the Geheebs attracting many Indian intellectuals and Indophile Germans to their schools. This book explores the areas where the lives of the Geheebs and Tagore, and their respective circles, overlap. Rather than being a biography, a history, or a comprehensive description, this study is a comparison of Tagore and the Geheebs and their schools. Making use of the repository of unpublished correspondence available at the Ecole's archive, the author studies the Indo-German cultural exchanges in the early twentieth century that were initiated by these three educators and their pedagogical vision.

On the relationship between Rabindranath Tagore and his four German friends.

Age of Entanglement explores patterns of connection linking German and Indian intellectuals from the nineteenth century to the years after the Second World War. Kris Manjapra traces the intersecting ideas and careers of a diverse collection of individuals from South Asia and Central Europe who shared ideas, formed networks, and studied one another’s worlds. Moving beyond well-rehearsed critiques of colonialism towards a new critical approach, this study recasts modern intellectual history in terms of the knotted intellectual itineraries of seeming strangers. Collaborations in the sciences, arts, and humanities produced extraordinary meetings of German and Indian minds. Meghnad Saha met Albert Einstein, Stella Kramrisch brought the Bauhaus to Calcutta, and Girindrasekhar Bose began a correspondence with Sigmund Freud. Rabindranath Tagore traveled to Germany to recruit scholars for a new Indian university, and the actor Himanshu Rai hired director Franz Osten to help establish movie studios in Bombay. These interactions, Manjapra argues, evinced shared responses to the cultural and political hegemony of the British empire. Germans and Indians hoped to find in one another the tools needed to disrupt an Anglocentric world order. As Manjapra demonstrates, transnational intellectual encounters are not inherently progressive. From Orientalism and Aryanism to socialism and scientism, German–Indian entanglements were neither necessarily liberal nor conventionally cosmopolitan, often characterized as much by manipulation as by cooperation. Age of Entanglement underscores the connections between German and Indian intellectual history, revealing the characteristics of a global age when the distance separating Europe and Asia seemed, temporarily, to disappear.

For other editions, see Author Catalog.