Der Untergang des Abendlandes : Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, Erster Band, Gestalt und Wirklichkeit [with] Zweiter Band, Welthistorische Perspektiven [The Decline (Twilight) of the West]

Munchen: Oskar Beck, 1920. 2 vols: 1920 and 1922. Shipping at cost for these 2 heavy volumes. Clean, square, tight, unmarked set. Bookplate in each volume. "Erster Band... 15. - 22., Unveranderte Auflage." xv, 616pp + 8 pages of ads. Illustrated with 3 folding charts. Volume II: "Zweiter Band... Sechzehnte bis Dreissigste Auflage." vii, 635pp + 12 pages of ads. Early printings [Volume I, 1920; & Volume II, 1922] of volumes first published in 1918 and 1922, respectively. Complete 2 volume set of a work that Carter/Muir identify as one of the 424 most influential books of all time. See Printing and the Mind of Man, The Impact of Print on Five Centuries of Western Civilization #410: "[Spengler] contended that all civilizations, like every other living organism, pass through a predetermined 'life cycle' of prime, maturity and decay... Spengler distinguished eight civilizations which, independent of one another, have run this course: Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese, Greco-Roman, Arabic, Mexican and Western. The outlook for western civilization, to Spengler, is gloomy. The end is at hand. Democracy, the typical product of western civilization, will be wiped out by caesarean autocracy. The tremendous success of the book among the semi-literate, especially in Germany and America, during the period after the First World War, is a politico-sociological phenomenon that has nothing to do with the intrinsic merits or demerits of this 'new outlook on history and the philosophy of destiny,' as the author himself described the aim of his book... Every responsible historian repudiated Spengler's theory; but it offered a plausible pseudo-scientific basis to the innate propensity of the Germans for ascribing to an inexorable fate what they refused to acknowledge as their own shortcomings and failures; & it confirmed the Americans in their complacent belief that 'the West' (which they equated with the Old World) was in fact 'finished' ... It was the major prophet, Toynbee, who took up the mantle that fell from the minor prophet, Spengler." Original cream-colored cloth spines and decorated boards. Titles and decorations in black. Original blue top-stain. Full title: Der Untergang des Abendlandes : Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltgeschichte, Erster Band, Gestalt und Wirklichkeit [with] Zweiter Band, Welthistorische Perspektiven [The Decline (Twilight) of the West]. Early printings. Hardcover (heavy). Very Good condition.