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Europe in the 1920s The Age of Anxiety. Modern Philosophy. WWI signaled an end to the optimism of industrial progress and enlightened liberal ideas Sigmund Freud (1856-1939): The price of progress and civilization based on repression of primitive desires is happiness
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Europe in the 1920s The Age of Anxiety
Modern Philosophy WWI signaled an end to the optimism of industrial progress and enlightened liberal ideas Sigmund Freud (1856-1939): The price of progress and civilization based on repression of primitive desires is happiness the human psyche has 3 parts that develop at different stages: • the id (it): primitive & instinctive traits (the pleasure principle) • the ego (the I): the reality principle – keeps the id in check • the Superego (above I): learned morals and values; the conscience & ideal self
“God is Dead” Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) • Critic of rationalism and Christianity • The Ubermensch could successfully reorder the world
Postwar Literature Characteristics: • Pessimistic, uncertainty of future, desolate, helplessness Stream of consciousness & the inner monologue • Marcel Proust • Virginia Woolf • Franz Kafka • Hermann Hesse • James Joyce
Literature Virginia Woolf • Marcel Proust (1871-1922) • Hailed as one of the great stylists of the French language. • Remembrance of Things Past: introverted, detailed picture of upper-class Parisian life and one man’s quiet suffering; became the model for interior monologue. • Franz Kafka (1883-1924) • Manuscripts included realistic, reasonable description of fantasies that convey the torture of anxiety. • The Trial (1925): an exploration of the psychology of guilt; foreshadows totalitarian state. • James Joyce (1882-1941) • Ulysses (1922): the life of a modest Dubliner; exuberant, inventive language using puns, cliché, parody, and poetry. • Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) • Political activist, feminist prominent in England’s intellectual circles • A Room of One’s Own (1929): explored value of female perspective, ways in which women were repressed from intellectual independence.
The New Physics • Albert Einstein (1879-1955) • Theory of relativity challenged Newtonian physics • Built on Max Planck’s quantum theory • Matter and energy are interchangeable and even a particle of matter has enormous energy • Ernest Rutherford • Atom could be split • Werner Heisenberg • Principle of uncertainty (1927) • Enrico Fermi • 1st nuclear reactor
The Nature of Matter Marie Curie • Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley • Demonstrated that the speed of light was the same regardless of whether it traveled in the same direction as the earth • Challenged the existence of “ether,” the motionless substance supposed to fill the universe • Led Albert A. Einstein to theory of relativity • Space and time must be measured in relation to the observer and are aspects of a single continuum. • Wilhelm Roentgen • Discovered x-rays in 1895; gave insight into world of subatomic particles • J.J. Thompson • Showed existence of electron • Pierre and Marie Curie • Discovered radioactive material • Ernest Rutherford • Identified radioactivity with breakdown of heavy and unstable atoms
The Biological and Social Sciences • Knowledge of mechanisms of heredity furthered scientific breeding of animals and plant hybridization, increasing productivity of agriculture • Sir Alexander Fleming and Sir Howard Florey • Discovered penicillin in 1928 • Émile Durkheim and Max Weber • Durkheim used statistical tools, Weber used the “ideal type” to analyze how societies function • Emphasized importance of religion in regards to how it contributed to development of the state • Stressed threat to society of group norms breaking down
Public Culture The “flapper dress,” popularized in the ‘20s. • Cinema • Became more popular and profitable than any form of entertainment in history • People of every class attended; women could go without male escorts • The USA led in film production, followed by Japan and Germany • Introduction of talking pictures underscored national differences; countries strained to censor on-screen sex and violence • Many countries banned German films in the 1920s • Music • In America, the period after World War I and before the start of the Great Depression was known as the “Jazz Age” • Jazz openly learned from African art • Consumerism • Sophistication was used to justify lipstick, short skirts, alcohol • Berlin rivaled Paris as a European artistic center for the first time
Art in the 1920s
Modern Art: Dada, Surrealism, Photomontage & Bauhaus • Marcel Duchamp • Salvador Dali • Hannah Hoch • Walter Gropius & Bauhaus: modernist, rational & functional
George Grosz Grey Day(1921) DaDa
George Grosz The Pillars of Society(1926) DaDa
From the German Point of View Lost—but not forgotten country. • Into the heart You are to dig yourself these words as into stone: Which we have lost may not be truly lost!
The “Stabbed-in-the-Back” Theory Disgruntled German WWI veterans
German Freikorps Anti-Communism forces: Right-wing paramilitary volunteer groups.
Sparticists • Sparticist Poster • Communists led by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht • Berlin revolution put down by Freikorps • Showed weakness of Weimar Republic
The Spartacist League Rosa Luxemburg[1870-1919]murdered by the Freikorps
The Young Plan (1930) For three generations, you’ll have to slave away! $26,350,000,000 to be paid over a period of 58½ years.
Adolf Hitler- Leader (der Fuhrer) of Germany from 1933 -1945 Country: Germany Type of Government: Nazism (dictatorship) Goals and Ideas: • Inflation and depression weakened the democratic government in Germany and allowed an opportunity for Hitler to rise to power • Believed the western powers had no intention of using force to maintain the Treaty of Versailles • Anti-Semitism: persecution of Jews • Extreme nationalism: National Socialism (aka Nazism) • Aggression: German occupation of nearby countries • Lebensraum: unite all German speaking nations • Anschluss (1938): German union with Austria
Benito Mussolini- Leader (Il Duce) of Italy from 1922-1943 Country: Italy Type of Government: Fascism (dictatorship) Goals and Ideas: • Centralized all power in himself as leader (total control of social, economic, and political life) • Ambition to restore the glory of Rome • Abyssinian Crisis: Invasion of Ethiopia, 1935 • Rome-Berlin Axis, 1936
