Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Joanne Miyang Cho, Eric Kurlander, and Douglas T. McGetchin -- Fostering aesthetic tolerance through literary translation : Georg Forster's Sakuntala Madhuvanti Karyekar -- India and Hegel's "scientific" method in the phenomenology of spirit / Nicholas Germana -- Claims and disclaimers : Schopenhauer and the cross-cultural comparative enterprise / Sai Bhatawadekar -- Rudolf Steiner and the theosophy of greed / Jared Poley -- The redemption of the scientist : Richard Garbe as a chronicler of India / Joydeep Bagchee and Vishwa P. Adluri -- German travelers to India at the fin-de-siècle and their ambivalent views of the Raj / Perry Myers -- Germans in India between Kaiserreich and the end of World War II / Joachim Osterheld -- Cross-cultural transfer and Indophilia in Count Hermann Keyserling / Joanne Miyang Cho -- Asian anti-imperialism and leftist antagonism in Weimar Germany / Douglas T. McGetchin -- Indian political activities in Germany, 1914-1945 / Benjamin Zachariah -- The orientalist roots of National Socialism? : Nazism, occultism, and South Asian spirituality, 1919-1945 / Eric Kurlander -- The melancholy of the thinking racist : India and the ambiguities of race in the work of Hans F.K. Günther / Lucia Staiano-Daniels -- West Germany's India policy 1949 to 1972 / Amit Das Gupta -- East meets East : Fritz Bennewitz's theatrical journeys from the GDR to India / Joerg Esleben -- The passion of Paul Hacker : Indology, orientalism, and evangelism / Joydeep Bagchee and Vishwa P. Adluri.

"Providing a comprehensive survey of cutting edge scholarship in the field of German-Indian and South Asian Studies, Transcultural Encounters between Germany and India looks at the history of German-Indian relations in the spheres of culture, politics, and intellectual life. Combining transnational, post-colonial, and comparative approaches, the book first examines the ways in which nineteenth century "Indomania" figured in the creation of both German national identity and modern German scholarship on the Orient, illustrating how German encounters with India in the Imperial era alternately destabilized and reinforced the orientalist, capitalist, and nationalist underpinnings of German modernity. Moving into the twentieth century, contributors discuss the full range of German responses to India as well as South Asian perceptions of Germany against the backdrop of war and socio-political revolution, including the Third Reich's ambivalent perceptions of India in the context of racism, religion, and occultism. The book concludes by exploring German-Indian relations in the era of decolonization and the Cold War. Employing a diverse array of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding German-Indian encounters over the past two centuries, this book is of interest to students and scholars of Germany, India, Europe and Asia, as well as history, political science, anthropology, philosophy, comparative literature, and religious studies"-- Provided by publisher.