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A mirror of social order: Ideals of beauty from the Enlightenment to the 1930s.

What do middle-class women in the 19th century have in common with the maimed victims of the First World War? What is the association between the »New Woman«

in the Weimar Republic and the patients of social medicine? They were all part of a debate revolving around the cosmetic correction of the human body and society.
Annelie Ramsbrock records the history of artificially created beauty from the end of the Enlightenment to the beginning of National Socialism. She shows that the development of ideals of beauty was always subject to underlying social patterns.

On the one hand, the development of scientific knowledge is seen in areas such as transplant medicine and the production of cosmetics. On the other hand, corrected bodies offered a projection surface for ideas of social order. By examining the history of beauty as a history both of knowledge and of values, the authoress places a special emphasis on the »beauty myth« .



The Authoress

Annelie Ramsbrock studied History, German, Evangelical Theology and Art History at the University of Bielefeld and the John Hopkins University, Baltimore. Doctorate in Modern History at the FU Berlin. She is an Assistant Lecturer at the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam. Publications on the history of science and the body.

Rights sold:
English world: Palgrave MacMillan