German Literature, 1918–1933

Author(s):  
Helmuth Kiesel

This chapter charts the development of literature during the years of the Weimar Republic. Three tendencies were particularly important. (1) Literature turned towards politics with an unprecedented intensity, attempting to influence the republic’s political and social development. It became a ‘weapon’, fostering the ‘formation of a frontline’ between different political, social, and cultural camps. This included the dispute over the lost war and the revolution. (2) A broad Zeitliteratur (literature of that time) on modern life emerged—on the metropolis, the world of industrial labour, being a white-collar employee, women’s emancipation—but also on tensions between progressive and conservative forces, and between metropolis and province. (3) All three literary genres, lyric, drama, and epic, showed new approaches by productively connecting innovative and traditional creative patterns, particularly in the exemplary works of Alfred Döblin, Gottfried Benn, and Bertolt Brecht, that represented a new kind of ‘reflective modernity’.

Author(s):  
Benjamin W. Goossen

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the global Mennonite church developed an uneasy relationship with Germany. Despite the religion's origins in the Swiss and Dutch Reformation, as well as its longstanding pacifism, tens of thousands of members embraced militarist German nationalism. This book is a sweeping history of this encounter and the debates it sparked among parliaments, dictatorships, and congregations across Eurasia and the Americas. Offering a multifaceted perspective on nationalism's emergence in Europe and around the world, the book demonstrates how Mennonites' nationalization reflected and reshaped their faith convictions. While some church leaders modified German identity along Mennonite lines, others appropriated nationalism wholesale, advocating a specifically Mennonite version of nationhood. Examining sources from Poland to Paraguay, the book shows how patriotic loyalties rose and fell with religious affiliation. Individuals might claim to be German at one moment but Mennonite the next. Some external parties encouraged separatism, as when the Weimar Republic helped establish an autonomous “Mennonite State” in Latin America. Still others treated Mennonites as quintessentially German; under Hitler's Third Reich, entire colonies benefited from racial warfare and genocide in Nazi-occupied Ukraine. Whether choosing Germany as a national homeland or identifying as a chosen people, called and elected by God, Mennonites committed to collective action in ways that were intricate, fluid, and always surprising.


2021 ◽  
pp. 135050682110289
Author(s):  
Andrea Pérez-Fernández

This article addresses the work of the German artist Hannah Höch in the light of the struggle for abortion rights in the Weimar Republic. I attempt to show how Höch’s uses of the technique of photomontage can be read as a way of introducing a distance between the work and the viewer that allows us to question the beliefs we use to make sense of the world. Specifically, I discuss her photomontage Mutter (‘Mother’), a version of a photograph taken by John Heartfield, and some of her writings and interviews. I also examine closely the material conditions and political debates in which Höch’s work – as a social practice – developed. After a brief introduction and a methodological outline, I present Höch in the context of Berlin Dada and summarise the main underlying arguments of my hypothesis. Namely, that the major interest of Höch’s photomontages lies in the complex articulation of activism and philosophy, and in the way in which they put mainstream categories into question by ‘distancing’ fragments of reality.


Social Change ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-482
Author(s):  
Zoya Hasan

The recent spread of the delta variant of the COVID-19 pandemic in many countries, though uneven, has once again set alarm bells ringing throughout the world. Nearly two years have passed since the onset of this pandemic: vaccines have been developed and vaccination is underway, but the end of the campaign against the pandemic is nowhere in sight. This drive has merely attempted to adjust and readjust, with or without success, to the various fresh challenges that have kept emerging from time to time. The pandemic’s persistence and its handling by the governments both have had implications for citizens’/peoples’ rights as well as for the systems which were in place before the pandemic. In this symposium domain experts investigate, with a sharp focus on India, the interface between the COVID-19 pandemic and democracy, health, education and social sciences. These contributions are notable for their nuanced and insightful examination of the impact of the pandemic on crucial social development issues with special attention to the exacerbated plight of society’s marginalised sections. In India, as in several other countries, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected democracy. The health crisis came at a moment when India was already experiencing democratic backsliding. The pandemic came in handy in imposing greater restrictions on democratic rights, public discussion and political opposition. This note provides an analysis and commentary on how the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted governance, at times undermining human rights and democratic processes, and posing a range of new challenges to democracy.


Author(s):  
G. Irishin

This publication represents the materials of the regular academic seminar “The current problems of development” conducted by the Center of the problems of development and modernization within IMEMO. The attention of the key speakers and other seminar participants is focused on the comparison of the two BRICS countries – Brazil and Russia. The main emphasis is made on the analysis of the trends of social development. The point is that the quality of human capital determines the quality of economic growth, as well as the country's place in the world in the long run.


Author(s):  
Olga Pryazhnikova ◽  

The World Bank has made an important contribution to shaping the global agenda for reducing poverty, increasing prosperity and promoting sustainable development. The review examines the main milestones in changes of the World Bank’s activities in the field of social development. The evolution of the organization’s approaches to solving the problem of poverty reduction as one of the key obstacles to socio-economic development is outlined.


1992 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-206
Author(s):  
J. Wesley Robbins

The classical pragmatists were as concerned as any of their modern philosophical predecessors that the moral and religious aspects of human life not be swamped by the successes of the physical sciences. It was John Dewey, after all, who said thatThe problem of restoring integration and cooperation between man's beliefs about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about the values and purposes that should direct his conduct is the deepest problem of modern life. It is the problem of any philosophy that is not isolated from that life.


Author(s):  
Noah Benezra Strote

This concluding chapter argues that Germans themselves imagined the framework for a more stable political structure before the arrival of American troops. The reconstruction of post-Nazi Germany relied so much on the reconciliation of previously conflicting groups that “partnership” became its foundational ideology. The Germans who rebuilt the educational system in the Federal Republic, West Germany's intelligentsia, were the lions and lambs of the Weimar Republic in their youth. They lived through and participated in the social, economic, political, and cultural conflicts that tore apart German society before Hitler's rise. They also witnessed the Nazi attempt to overcome those conflicts, and some supported Hitler publicly before opposing him as he led Europe and the world into a catastrophic war. When this generation of Germans designed courses of education for the rising post-Nazi generations, they celebrated the ideal of partnership precisely to avoid the earlier conflicts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
Ebrahim Estarami

Using the novella as the European literary genre has divided the Iranian literary scholars due mostly to its unknown features. Lack of research in this area has caused many writers either to abandon this literary term or to opt for alternatives such as “novelette”,” long story”, “long short story” or “short story”. This article aims to introduce the theory and characteristics of the novella as a unique literary genre, based on German literature. Despite the Italian root of the novella, it reflects its Germanic roots as it was flourished in the 18th and 19th centuries Germany. In addition, the paper explores the concept of “long story” in Iranian literature as the synonym of the term novella. The Blind Owl clearly exhibits these characteristics of the genre, especially the dramatic structure and representing a new aspect of human trait. The analysis of The Blind Owl leads to a deeper understanding of one of the most important and well-formed European literary genres and a new look at Sadegh Hedayat’s ideology as a professional author in addition to familiarizing scholars with this genre.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 321
Author(s):  
PI Van Niekerk

<strong>God and poverty in the Karoo – A reflection on a theology of transformation</strong> <br /> The Karoo is an outstretched arid area characterised by poverty and underdevelopment. This article focuses on the poverty of the Karoo people and the effect of their faith in God on social development and transformation. The future of the Karoo is vested in its people and religious communities. Previous research indicated that believers’ image of God had an effect on their attitude towards social development and transformation. A small sample of women in a Karoo town experienced God as loving, but not as a God that inspired people towards transformation. The test for the church lies in her social involvement in the world as its salvation is God’s concern. In Christian humanism the integrity of creation in a world filled with injustice and poverty is emphasised. Churches in the Karoo are encouraged to utilise a theology of transformation that is developmentally driven and inspired by a transforming image of God.


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