'Material Delight and the Joy of Living'

Eighteenth-century Europe witnessed a commercialisation of culture. Culture became less courtly and more urban. The marketing of culture separated itself from the production of culture. New cultural entrepreneurs entered the stage: The impresario, the publisher, the book seller, the art dealer, the auction house, and the reading society served as middlemen between producers and consumers of culture, and constituted at the same time the beginning of a cultural service sector.Cultural consumption played a substantial role in creating social identity. One could demonstrate social status by attending an auction, watching a play, or listening to a concert. Moreover, and eventually more important, one could demonstrate connoisseurship and taste, which became important indicators of social standing.The centres of cultural exchange and consumption were the great cities of Europe. In the course of the eighteenth century, however, cultural consumption spread much deeper, for example into the numerous residential and university towns in Germany, where a growing number of functional elites and burghers (so-called Bildungsburger) met in coffee houses and reading societies, attended the plays of theatre-and opera companies and performed orchestral and chamber music together. Besides journals, novels and letters constituted a consumer culture in provincial Germany. As the German states were remote from the cultural life of London and Paris, the material reality of London and Paris often passed as a literary construction to Germany.It is against this background, and stimulated by the research of John Brewer on England, that the book systematically explores this field for the first time in regard to the Continent, and especially to eighteenth-century Germany. Michael North focuses on the new forms of entertainment (concerts, theatre, opera, reading societies, travelling) on the one hand and on the new material culture (fashion, gardens, country houses, furniture) on the other. For this reason the reception of English culture on the Continent is in the centre of the discussion, whereby the competition of English and French fashions in the homes of German elites and burghers attracts special attention. The book closes with an investigation of the role of cultural consumption for identity formation, demonstrating the integration of Germany into a European cultural identity/taste discourse during the eighteenth century.