Europe in the 1920s The Age of Anxiety
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
Europe in the 1920s The Age of Anxiety
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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
