A History of Germany 1918 - 2020. Mary Fulbrook
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Название: A History of Germany 1918 - 2020

Автор: Mary Fulbrook

Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited

Жанр: Историческая литература

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isbn: 9781119574248

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СКАЧАТЬ in Dresden) and ‘Der blaue Reiter’ (based in Munich) – continued to be creative in the early Weimar years. Expressionism – associated with names such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Franz Marc – exploded and diversified into an array of experimental and avant-garde tendencies: cubism, futurism, Dada and other styles flourished. Architectural developments associated with names such as Bruno Taut and Erich Mendelsohn changed the environment of major cities including Berlin, complementing and displacing the heavily ornamental bourgeois style of the imperial period. The Bauhaus school of design, founded by Walter Gropius in 1919, was based initially in Weimar, moving to Dessau in 1925 and Berlin in 1930. Focusing on architecture, the fine arts, graphic design and crafts, even dance, and informed by a wider philosophy of life in which teachers and pupils lived and worked together, it combined concern with functionality and affordability with a new sense of aesthetics. It, too, fell victim to the Nazi takeover, being pressured to close the Berlin school in 1933, but again, the exile of many leading proponents – not only Gropius but also, for example, Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer – in fact served to spread its message to large parts of North America and Europe. The work of the Bauhaus was of major influence in twentieth-century architecture, art and design, with an impact ranging from the design of housing estates for the masses to villas and cultural centres, from steel tube chairs to the humble kettle, from the art of individuals such as Wassily Kandinsky to the basic elements of graphic design. In literature, a great range of prose, poetry and drama was produced which has proved to be of lasting significance. Again, the modernist period was far broader both chronologically and geographically than the Weimar epoch, and many significant works were germinated and published well outside this compass. Yet major works – Thomas Mann’s masterpiece The Magic Mountain, for example – were published during this period. Names such as Heinrich and Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke, Bertolt Brecht and his musical associate Kurt Weill have achieved enduring international standing. In music, too, the experimental work and twelve-tone method of the Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg was influential, if controversial, informing the work of contemporaries and pupils including Alban Berg and Hanns Eisler, another associate of Bertolt Brecht.

      Radio, too, was a new medium of communication which became ever more significant. Radio ownership spread rapidly among German households and contributed to the formation of a new national public. The commercialization of leisure may have started to break down divisions between class-based subcultures and began to erode the hold of the SPD over the outlook and organizations of large parts of the working class.8 Regional isolation was also diminished, in a less than democratic manner, with increased concentration in the newspaper industry: press barons such as Hugenberg not only directly owned and influenced their own newspapers but also indirectly affected the contents and political bias of ‘independent’ local papers through their press agency services and the provision of news snippets and commentaries.

      New media of communication had a variety of consequences and could be used to a wide variety of ends. In film, radio and newsprint, as in other areas of Weimar culture, developments were ambiguous. While certain renowned films, such as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues), took a firm stand against war, they remained the exception: there were many more, generally ephemeral and of low artistic quality, which glorified nationalism, war and the fatherland. In the sphere of radio, pro-Republican forces failed to gain political control or make serious use of a medium which was for most of the Weimar period intended to be politically neutral. It was only in 1932 that Franz von Papen (then Chancellor) asserted political control of the radio, leaving a welcome gift for the Nazis to exploit in their propaganda efforts after January 1933.