HIST 2509 A History of Germany Lecture 13-2 Germany at the Fin-de-Siècle

The Augsburg Zoo Affair 2005

Today’s Main Themes Understanding “modernity.” An antidote to authoritarianism? The multiple Germanys. Antecedents to Weimar and Nazi Germany.

I. Modernity and Its Discontents Wilhelmine Germany -paradoxes, contrasts, and contradictions -politically, socially fractured -competing agendas and ways of life: traditionalism, authoritarianism, and modernity

Die Hüldegung Wilhelm I, by Paul Bürde 1871 German Historical Museum, Berlin Traditionalism

The Siegesallee in Berlin’s Tiergarten Max Missmann, 1905 German Historical Museum, Berlin Authoritarianism

Life in Poverty in Berlin, 1910 German Historical Museum, Berlin The depths of poverty

Swimsuit Fashions, 1913 German Historical Museum, Berlin The height of modernity

II. Mass Politics and Culture Pan-German League Navy League support for naval race

Berlin Germania Football Squad, 1898 German Historical Museum, Berlin

The Panopticon “in their re-created villages” High and low culture: mass spectacle

Die Völkerschau der Samoaner 1910, Dresden Zoo. Acting the Part

III. Literature, Art, and Society 1)establishment culture 2)anti-bourgeois expression 3)literary opposition, theater, cabaret 4)painting and sculpture 5)music

1) establishment culture elitist, status, station hero-worship sentimentality Berlin Cathedral, 1898 German Historical Museum

2) anti-bourgeois expression SPD-driven cultural movements -Volkshochschule “people’s schools” -Käthe Kollwitz, Gerhard Hauptmann -Heinrich Mann and education Clara Zetkin ( ) Socialist-feminist, teacher, and MP

2) anti-bourgeois expression Middle-class movements -the Wandervogel (wandering birds) -Karl Fischer and Hans Breuer Der Zupfgeigenhansl (Guitarist’s Companion)

More wandering birds….

-anti-materialism -anti-bourgeois -sometimes anti-semitic -anti-war -Hohen Meissen 1913 re-enactment of Battle of Nations 1813

Nudism and FKK Freiekörperkultur -health, sport, beauty, freedom nakididity

Back to the land artist colony in Worpswede, Heinrich Vogeler

Desire, 1908, also by Vogeler

3) literary opposition, theater, cabaret -the press Simplizissimus (The Simpleton) 1892 Der Wahre Jacob (The Real McCoy) Zukunft (Future) -Maximilian Harden, “the table,” and the Eulenberg Affair

3) literary opposition, theater, cabaret -Trivialliteratur, Schundliteratur (the yellow press) -romance novels -from highbrow to lowbrow -science fiction, mystical, erotica -prostitutes, city life, decline of middle class

Theater Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater -naturalism (socially critical Theater -- The Weavers 1893) -socialist Freie Volksbühne (people’s stage)

cabaret

4) Painting, sculpture “this was the taste of an age that had no taste” -a turn away from naturalism and sentimentalism Munich seccessionism -paved way for impressionism ( ) and expressionism ( ) -and Jugendstil or art nouveau

Impressionism -Monet

Expressionism -Emil Nolde’s The Dancers Klimt’s JugendstilKlimt’s Jugendstil

-from the sentimentalism of Wagner’s operas to avant guard and experimental -Arnold Schoenberg’s atonalityArnold Schoenberg’s atonality 5) music

IV. Sexual Science and the Unconscious a.Freud and psychoanalysis b.sexology -Krafft-Ebing, Hirschfeld, and the third sex -companionate marriage and repeal of anti- sodomy legislation

Advice manuals, magazines, self help guides anything but Victorian values

V. The Balance Sheet Literature, art, society between traditionalism and modernity Not turn inward, but intensely political Weimar, Nazi cultural and political antecedents Alongside authoritarianism stood powerful critique of society **how will 1914 affect these voices of opposition?