scholarly journals Home Truths and Uncomfortable Spaces: Swiss Hotels and Literature of the 1920s

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 444-465
Author(s):  
Seán M Williams
Keyword(s):  
Popular Literature ◽  
Culture War ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Hermann Hesse ◽  
Commercial Viability ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
First World ◽  
Material Setting ◽  
Grand Hotel

Abstract Switzerland was at the centre of the European grand hotel scene, geographically and discursively. This article considers Swiss hotel literature and life in the 1920s, a decade in which the country’s hotel landscape became politicized and, relatedly, was often portrayed in popular literature. Against the backdrop of more canonical and intellectual hotel literature set in Switzerland, the following reads Meinrad Inglin’s Grand Hotel Excelsior (1928) as a response to a contemporary ‘culture war’, and as an attempt at centrist cultural criticism. Drawing especially on magazine and other archival evidence, this article also uncovers the promotion, sponsorship and discussion of hotel literature by Swiss hotel lobbyists, which was concerned with increasing the commercial viability of hotels after the First World War, and improving their image at a time of polarized debates about the direction of Swiss society. Thus Inglin’s novel occupies a centre ground not only in its argument, but in a formal sense as well. Grand Hotel Excelsior is a literary means of mediating the problems of Swiss culture in the 1920s, manifest in hotels as actual spaces or subjects, rather than a novel written for, or adaptable to, vested interests, or a work that employs – in the vein of Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse – the hotel as a material setting to explore abstract ideas.

scholarly journals Secularity and burial space in 19th century England

2019 ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Julie Rugg
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Culture War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Siglo Xix ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Spiritual Expression ◽  
First World ◽  
Established Church

Este artículo cuestiona la afirmación de que la secularidad ha sido siempre un debate central en la idea de cementerio. En gran parte de Inglaterra se impuso una ‘guerra cultural’ entre partidarios de la Iglesia Anglicana y varias confesiones de Disidencia protestante. El cementerio fue un foco de conflicto, centra- do en el grado de control ejercido por la Iglesia Establecida. Este conflicto no reflejó la demanda de funerales ‘civiles’. Los protestantes No Conformistas buscaron asegurar un espacio de enterramiento y donde pudieran expresar sus propias creencias. A lo largo del siglo XIX y hasta la I Guerra Mundial, la formulación del derecho de enterramiento estuvo acompañada de conflictivos debates. Los cementerios llegaron a significar tanto la libertad religiosa como la influencia opresiva de la Iglesia Establecida. También estuvieron acompañados de una regulación sobre el gestión de entierros sanitarios, pero esto no definió el espacio de enterramiento como específicamente secular. Más bien, en Inglaterra, el cementerio fue, y sigue siendo, una coproducción espacial de tecnología sanitaria, burocracia municipal y expresión espiritual. This paper challenges the contention that secularity is always central to the idea of the cemetery. In largely England a ‘culture war’ was enjoined between supporters of the Church of England and various denom- inations of Protestant Dissent. The cemetery was a focus of conflict, centred on the degree of control exercised by the Established Church. This conflict did not reflect demand for ‘civic’ funerals. Protestant Nonconformists sought to secure burial space where they might express their own beliefs. Through the 19th century and up until the First World War, the framing of burial law was accompanied by divisive debate. Cemeteries came to signify both religious freedom and the oppressive influence of the Established Church. Cemetery establishment was also accompanied by regulation on sanitary burial management, but this did not define burial space as being innately secular. Rather, in England the cemetery was, and remains, a spatial co-production of sanitary technology, municipal bureaucracy and spiritual expression.

scholarly journals Not so Quiet on the New Zealand Front: All Quiet on the Western Front and New Zealand Memories of First World War

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Loveridge
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Subject ◽  
First World ◽  
New Zealanders

In 1929, ten years after the end of the First World War, many New Zealanders commented on how their memories and sense of the conflict sat with the representations emerging within contemporary popular literature.  Much of this commentary cited Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front which stood as the definitive example of a new more graphic and cynical presentation of the war emerging at the time.Study of this commentary complicates some of the assertions of previous studies on the subject of New Zealand’s memory and sense of the conflict.  It suggests that, in 1929, New Zealander’s held and advanced multifaceted, nuanced and, very significantly, noisy interpretations of the war.  Evidently it was not so quiet on the New Zealand front.

scholarly journals “Ireland first”: The Great War in the Irish Juvenile Press

2018 ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Elena Ogliari
Keyword(s):  
Popular Literature ◽  
First World War ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Post War ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

Inspired by Ben Novick’s studies on the response of the Irish advanced nationalist press to the First World War, this paper focuses on a less-explored topic, i.e. the representation of the conflict in the separatist press for Ireland’s youth. Combining literary and historical interests, I devote my attention to the editorials and literary contributions published in the pages of the juvenile periodicals during and after the war, to highlight how these papers came to popularise, among the youngsters, a specific reception of the first ‘total’ conflict. Spy- and war- stories, ballads and aislings took hold of the boys’ and girls’ imagination: a powerful propagandist instrument, popular literature buttressed a nationalist agenda. At the same time, given the readers’ young age, these periodicals aimed to shape what was to become Ireland’s public memory of the Great War. In the public sphere of post-war Ireland, many soldiers were treated with disdain or indifference. The First World War and its protagonists were condemned to a period of oblivion, which has lasted until quite recently. Textual attention to the rhetoric and literary strategies adopted by the contributors helps to expose the nuances and shifts in the Irish nationalists’ view on war.

The Regime's ‘Musical Weapon’ Transformed: The Reception of Johann Strauss Sr's Radetzky March Before and After the First World War

2009 ◽  
Vol 134 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoë Lang
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World ◽  
The Revolution

Johann Strauss Sr's most famous composition, his 1848 Radetzky March, was premièred during revolutionary times. The March soon became a standard piece for Habsburg bands in the nineteenth century and was considered ideal for fostering patriotic sentiments at the start of the First World War. After the Great War, however, commentators portrayed the work very differently. No longer a part of contemporary culture, the Radetzky March now belonged to a bygone era. Biographers of the Strauss family found this work to be proof of Strauss Sr's support for the conservatives during the Revolution, a claim not supported by evidence. More generally, treating the piece as a relic from another age transformed it into a marker of nostalgia in the 1930s, as is best demonstrated in Joseph Roth's novel, Radetzkymarsch (1932).

An Introduction to the Writings of J. G. Mullen, An African Clerk, in the Gold Coast Leader, 1916–19

Africa ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Newell
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
First World War ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Online Version ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

J. G. Mullen was a Gold Coast clerk who published his memoirs, in instalments, in the Gold Coast Leader from 1916 to 1919. In this unusual narrative, he describes his adventures in Cameroon before and during the First World War. His account combines real-life geographical and social details with flamboyant tropes probably derived from imperial popular literature. Mullen's biography and even identity have so far been otherwise untraceable. His text offers glimpses, always enigmatic, of the experience and outlook of a member of the new clerkly class of colonial West Africa. This contribution presents an edited extract from Mullen's text together with a contextualizing and interpretative essay. The full Mullen text is available in the online version of this issue of Africa.

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