Performance Anxiety

Performance Anxiety analyses the efforts of German elites, from 1890 to 1945, to raise the productivity and psychological performance of workers through the promotion of mass sports. Michael Hau reveals how politicians, sports officials, medical professionals, and business leaders, articulated a vision of a human economy that was coopted in 1933 by Nazi officials in order to promote competition in the workplace. Hau's original and startling study is the first to establish how Nazi leaders' discourse about sports and performance was used to support their claims that Germany was on its way to becoming a true meritocracy. Performance Anxiety is essential reading for political, social, and sports historians alike.

‘Hau has written an extremely astute, well-researched study about the use of sport to promote performance enhancement in Germany from 1890 to 1945…. Highly recommended.’, "[Performance Anxiety’s] thoughtful analysis of various discourses surrounding performance bears both broad and very specific conclusions that many scholars will find valuable.", "Sophisticated, original, and richly detailed, Hau’s work sheds new light on the histories of sports, performance, health, state coercion, gender, and modernity in Germany.", "This monograph examines the relation between sports and work as well as their meaning and exploitation in the German Empire in an impressive way…very successful and readable.", "Performance Anxiety will be of particular benefit to those interested in the histories of German business, labor, and the wartime economy, as well as those interested in the history of sport and of biopolitical regimes more generally."

Michael Hau is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts at Monash University.