Intellectuals in their time

The intellectual is dead. Long live the intellectual! Repeatedly declared dead, he presents himself as highly vital as part of a renewed history of ideas – Intellectual History. This field is less concerned with eternal truths accompanied by decorative aphorisms or theoretical edifices, but rather with the dynamics and conflicts of political interpretation struggles. Capturing it in all its liveliness has little to do with dusty, antiquarian text studies of an outdated intellectual history. The power of ideas only reveals itself through their conditions of emergence and development, through a struggle for cultural hegemony and for attention in media and public discourse. Their engagement in such spheres of political thought brings intellectuals to life as central actors in the history of ideas. In the 20th century, this restless "Age of Extremes," intellectual workers underwent various metamorphoses between adaptation and independence. They did not always correspond to the image of heroic lone fighters and strong-willed nonconformists that they liked to portray of themselves. Alexander Gallus outlines paths for an actor-centered and context-oriented intellectual history. At the center is the figure of the intellectual in times of crisis. What distinguishes him? What role – whether as a party worker, professional critic, or expert – does he perceive? How does he position himself in the ideological world civil war?.