Introduction

Abstract

With the focus on the interface between religion and art, this interdisciplinary volume addresses India as a trope of primaeval religiosity and imagined origins in Imperial Germany, the Weimar Republic, and national socialist Germany, respectively. The book covers the period from 1880 to 1945, but with historical expeditions going back to 1800. Placing the focus on religion, it traces forms of identity-making and nation-building processes involved in the German–Indian entanglement. As a result, the volume offers a global historical approach to religion from a modern transformative perspective.