Legacies of Modernism

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XVI

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2. Introduction: The Future’s Past—Modernism, Critique, and the Political

   1. Introduction: The Future’s Past—Modernism, Critique, and the Political

      • Patrizia C. McBride

      Pages 1-13

3. High, Low, and Other: The Politics of Music

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 15-15

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   2. Hans Pfitzner and the Anxiety of Nostalgic Modernism

      • Marc A. Weiner

      Pages 17-28

   3. Mahler, Rembrandt, and the Dark Side of German Culture

      • Carl Niekerk

      Pages 29-40

4. Modernism/Antimodernism, Race and Eugenics in Scandinavia

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 41-41

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   2. The Resistance to Modernism in Karl Gjellerup’s Germanernes Lærling (1882)

      • Paul Houe

      Pages 43-54

   3. Knut Hamsun’s “White Negro” from Ringen Sluttet (1936)—Or the Politics of Race

      • Monika Žagar

      Pages 55-65

   4. Eugenic Sterilization and the Role of Science—The Scandinavian Case

      • Nils Roll-Hansen

      Pages 67-78

5. Science, Technology, and German Modernism

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 79-79

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   2. Reactionary Engineers? Technocracy and the Kulturfaktor Technik in Weimar Germany

      • Andreas Michel

      Pages 81-92

   3. Science, Art, and the Question of the Visible: Rudolf Virchow, Hannah Höch, and “Immediate Visual Perception”

      • Thomas O. Haakenson

      Pages 93-104

6. Architecture and Urban Planning in Weimar Modernity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 105-105

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   2. Imagining the New Berlin: Modernism, Mass Utopia, and the Architectural Avant-Garde

      • Sabine Hake

      Pages 107-118

   3. Rebuilding Babel: Urban Regeneration in the Modern/Postmodern Age

      • Janet Ward

      Pages 119-130

7. The Politics of Visual Culture: Weimar, Exile, and Postwar

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 131-131

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   2. Politicizing Painting: The Case of New Objectivity

      • Maria Makela

      Pages 133-147

   3. Modernism from Weimar to Hollywood: Expressionism/New Objectivity/Noir?

      • Richard W. McCormick

      Pages 149-161

   4. Clement Greenberg and the Postwar Modernist Canon: Minimizing the Role of Germany and Northern Europe

      • Matthew Rohn

      Pages 163-173

8. The Politics of Visual Culture in the Third Reich

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 175-175

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Between 1890 and 1950 modernist art and culture set out to challenge century-old notions of the individual and the community, culture and politics, morality and freedom, placing into question the very foundations of Western civilization. The essays in this volume present a novel assessment of various manifestations of modernism in Germany and Scandinavia by posing the question of its critical and political impact beyond traditional polarities such as right vs. left, illiberalism vs. Enlightenment, apolitical vs. engaged. In drawing on a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, including literary studies, art history, film and visual studies, urban studies, musicology, political theory, and the history of science and technology, the essays in this volume reexamine modernism's bold inquiry into areas such as the relation of art to technology and mass politics, the limits of liberal democracy, the reconceptualization of urban spaces, and the realignment of traditional art forms following the rise of new media such as film. The volume's contributors share a belief in the timeliness of modernism's critical impulse for a contemporary age confronted with ethical and political dilemmas that the modernists first articulated and to which they attempted to respond.

• culture
• Europe
• exile
• expressionism
• Germany
• Kultur
• Modernism
• politics
• technology
• Visual Culture

'This excellent collection of essays provides a rich and complete panorama of the main dimensions in which modernism, as an epochal cultural phenomenon, received, extended, but also undermined the intellectual tradition of modernity. It is unusual to find the cultural legacy of a period addressed from so many angles and with such depth and insight.' - Ernesto Laclau, Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Rhetorical Studies, Northwestern University

• University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA

  Patrizia C. McBride, Richard W. McCormick, Monika Žagar

PATRIZIA MCBRIDE is an Associate Professor of German at the University of Minnesota, USA.
RICHARD W.MCCORMICK is Professor of German, Department and the Director of Honors-College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota, USA.
MONIKA ZAGAR is an Associate Professor of Scandinavian at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA.

Policies and ethics