Karin Gunnemann
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691135106
- eISBN:
- 9781400846788
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691135106.003.0012
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter provides a literary and historical glimpse into the political fortunes of the great writers and novelists of the Weimar era, focusing on Kurt Tucholsky, Alfred Döblin, and the brothers ...
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This chapter provides a literary and historical glimpse into the political fortunes of the great writers and novelists of the Weimar era, focusing on Kurt Tucholsky, Alfred Döblin, and the brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann. Tucholsky (1890–1935) was foremost a polemical political journalist, a humorist, and a writer of satiric poetry for the cabarets of Berlin. No ills of the Republic escaped his witty scrutiny, but when the Republic failed he ended his life in despair. Heinrich Mann (1871–1950) was both a prolific writer of fiction and one of Germany's leading political essayists. In response to the cultural changes of the twenties, he developed a new aesthetic for fiction that helped him preserve his utopian ideal of a democratic Germany. Döblin (1878–1957) expressed his criticism of post-war German society with greatest success in Berlin Alexanderplatz. Thomas Mann (1875–1955) is a representative of those writers who had great difficulty in moving away from their aesthetic and autonomous view of literature to a more “democratic” way of writing.Less
This chapter provides a literary and historical glimpse into the political fortunes of the great writers and novelists of the Weimar era, focusing on Kurt Tucholsky, Alfred Döblin, and the brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann. Tucholsky (1890–1935) was foremost a polemical political journalist, a humorist, and a writer of satiric poetry for the cabarets of Berlin. No ills of the Republic escaped his witty scrutiny, but when the Republic failed he ended his life in despair. Heinrich Mann (1871–1950) was both a prolific writer of fiction and one of Germany's leading political essayists. In response to the cultural changes of the twenties, he developed a new aesthetic for fiction that helped him preserve his utopian ideal of a democratic Germany. Döblin (1878–1957) expressed his criticism of post-war German society with greatest success in Berlin Alexanderplatz. Thomas Mann (1875–1955) is a representative of those writers who had great difficulty in moving away from their aesthetic and autonomous view of literature to a more “democratic” way of writing.
Adrian Daub
E. Randol Schoenberg (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520296824
- eISBN:
- 9780520969155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520296824.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This section presents the letters, excepts from diaries, and other materials exchanged and/or written after Thomas Mann's delivery of a copy of Doctor Faustus to Arnold Schoenberg in January of 1948.
This section presents the letters, excepts from diaries, and other materials exchanged and/or written after Thomas Mann's delivery of a copy of Doctor Faustus to Arnold Schoenberg in January of 1948.
Ehrhard Bahr
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520251281
- eISBN:
- 9780520933804
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520251281.003.0011
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In the fashion of exile dialectics, Thomas Mann proposed the “identity of the non-identical” and said: “There are not two Germanys, a good one and a bad one, but only one, whose best turned into evil ...
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In the fashion of exile dialectics, Thomas Mann proposed the “identity of the non-identical” and said: “There are not two Germanys, a good one and a bad one, but only one, whose best turned into evil through devilish cunning. Wicked Germany is merely good Germany gone astray, good Germany in misfortune, in guilt, and ruin.” This chapter explores the role of dialectics as a structural element in Mann's novel Doctor Faustus. Mann's collaboration with Theodor W. Adorno reinforced this element not only as the essence of Faust's career as a German composer, but also as the basis for the allegory of Germany and its history. In addition, Adorno's concept of the “identity of the non-identical” enabled Mann to show that the life and works of Adrian Leverkühn not only reflected German history, but also contradicted it. The “identity of the non-identical” also became a structural element for Leverkühn's last composition, which marked his “breakthrough” as an authentic work of modernist art. It functions both as “historiography of its epoch” (Adorno) as well as an expression of human suffering.Less
In the fashion of exile dialectics, Thomas Mann proposed the “identity of the non-identical” and said: “There are not two Germanys, a good one and a bad one, but only one, whose best turned into evil through devilish cunning. Wicked Germany is merely good Germany gone astray, good Germany in misfortune, in guilt, and ruin.” This chapter explores the role of dialectics as a structural element in Mann's novel Doctor Faustus. Mann's collaboration with Theodor W. Adorno reinforced this element not only as the essence of Faust's career as a German composer, but also as the basis for the allegory of Germany and its history. In addition, Adorno's concept of the “identity of the non-identical” enabled Mann to show that the life and works of Adrian Leverkühn not only reflected German history, but also contradicted it. The “identity of the non-identical” also became a structural element for Leverkühn's last composition, which marked his “breakthrough” as an authentic work of modernist art. It functions both as “historiography of its epoch” (Adorno) as well as an expression of human suffering.
Nicholas Attfield
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780197266137
- eISBN:
- 9780191865206
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266137.003.0003
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Perhaps the most infamous of the Weimar musical ‘anti-modernists’, Hans Pfitzner is well known for his polemics against Paul Bekker and Busoni and his opera Palestrina, products of the First World ...
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Perhaps the most infamous of the Weimar musical ‘anti-modernists’, Hans Pfitzner is well known for his polemics against Paul Bekker and Busoni and his opera Palestrina, products of the First World War’s end. Pfitzner’s relationship with Thomas Mann has also been discussed, particularly in terms of Mann’s description, in his Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, of Pfitzner as the bearer of ‘sympathy with death’. As this chapter details, Mann’s early post-war work situated Pfitzner at the heart of a drive for revival, based around the ‘Hans Pfitzner Association for German Composition’, and linked to Mann’s idiosyncratic notions of cultural-political ‘synthesis’ and Humanität. This revival provoked Pfitzner’s swerve from opera towards the more direct public form of the cantata. Here, in his 1921 work Von deutscher Seele, the allegedly reclusive Pfitzner tried to strike a ‘popular’ tone and seized the moment to address his vision of the entire German nation.Less
Perhaps the most infamous of the Weimar musical ‘anti-modernists’, Hans Pfitzner is well known for his polemics against Paul Bekker and Busoni and his opera Palestrina, products of the First World War’s end. Pfitzner’s relationship with Thomas Mann has also been discussed, particularly in terms of Mann’s description, in his Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man, of Pfitzner as the bearer of ‘sympathy with death’. As this chapter details, Mann’s early post-war work situated Pfitzner at the heart of a drive for revival, based around the ‘Hans Pfitzner Association for German Composition’, and linked to Mann’s idiosyncratic notions of cultural-political ‘synthesis’ and Humanität. This revival provoked Pfitzner’s swerve from opera towards the more direct public form of the cantata. Here, in his 1921 work Von deutscher Seele, the allegedly reclusive Pfitzner tried to strike a ‘popular’ tone and seized the moment to address his vision of the entire German nation.
Adrian Daub
E. Randol Schoenberg (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520296824
- eISBN:
- 9780520969155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520296824.003.0002
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This section presents the letters, excerpts from diaries, and other materials exchanged and/or written before Thomas Mann's delivery of a copy of Doctor Faustus to Arnold Schoenberg in January of ...
More
This section presents the letters, excerpts from diaries, and other materials exchanged and/or written before Thomas Mann's delivery of a copy of Doctor Faustus to Arnold Schoenberg in January of 1948.Less
This section presents the letters, excerpts from diaries, and other materials exchanged and/or written before Thomas Mann's delivery of a copy of Doctor Faustus to Arnold Schoenberg in January of 1948.
Ehrhard Bahr
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520251281
- eISBN:
- 9780520933804
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520251281.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In the 1930s and 1940s, Los Angeles became an unlikely cultural sanctuary for a distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals—including Thomas Mann, Theodore W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, ...
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In the 1930s and 1940s, Los Angeles became an unlikely cultural sanctuary for a distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals—including Thomas Mann, Theodore W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, and Arnold Schoenberg—who had fled Nazi Germany. During their years in exile, they would produce a substantial body of major works to address the crisis of modernism that resulted from the rise of National Socialism. Weimar Germany and its culture, with its meld of eighteenth-century German classicism and twentieth-century modernism, served as a touchstone for this group of diverse talents and opinions. This is the first book to examine these artists and intellectuals as a group. It looks at selected works of Adorno, Schoenberg, Brecht, Lang, Mann, Max Horkheimer, Richard Joseph Neutra, Rudolph Michael Schindler, and Alfred Döblin, and weighs Los Angeles's influence on them and their impact on German modernism. Touching on such examples as film noir and Mann's Doctor Faustus, the book shows how this community of exiles reconstituted modernism in the face of the traumatic political and historical changes they were living through.Less
In the 1930s and 1940s, Los Angeles became an unlikely cultural sanctuary for a distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals—including Thomas Mann, Theodore W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, and Arnold Schoenberg—who had fled Nazi Germany. During their years in exile, they would produce a substantial body of major works to address the crisis of modernism that resulted from the rise of National Socialism. Weimar Germany and its culture, with its meld of eighteenth-century German classicism and twentieth-century modernism, served as a touchstone for this group of diverse talents and opinions. This is the first book to examine these artists and intellectuals as a group. It looks at selected works of Adorno, Schoenberg, Brecht, Lang, Mann, Max Horkheimer, Richard Joseph Neutra, Rudolph Michael Schindler, and Alfred Döblin, and weighs Los Angeles's influence on them and their impact on German modernism. Touching on such examples as film noir and Mann's Doctor Faustus, the book shows how this community of exiles reconstituted modernism in the face of the traumatic political and historical changes they were living through.
Brian Murdoch
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199596409
- eISBN:
- 9780191745737
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199596409.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History, Religion and Literature
The first modern adaptation of the Gregorius-narrative is a song-cycle by Franz Theodor Kugler and Carl Loewe in the Romantic period, the source of which is unclear. In the twentieth century Thomas ...
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The first modern adaptation of the Gregorius-narrative is a song-cycle by Franz Theodor Kugler and Carl Loewe in the Romantic period, the source of which is unclear. In the twentieth century Thomas Mann tackled the story twice, first briefly in his novel Doktor Faustus, where the central figure writes a musical puppet play of Gregorius, then later in his fascinating but linguistically and interpretatively difficult Der Erwählte, The Holy Sinner, which is here analysed in detail in terms of the sensitive modern reception of a medieval text, retaining the themes of sin and grace. This novel has given rise to far more recent experimental theatre versions in Poland and New Zealand. The now virtually unknown Austrian dramatist Rudolf Henz used the story, too, as an allegory of recent history, especially the takeover of Austria by the Nazis, in an impressive drama.Less
The first modern adaptation of the Gregorius-narrative is a song-cycle by Franz Theodor Kugler and Carl Loewe in the Romantic period, the source of which is unclear. In the twentieth century Thomas Mann tackled the story twice, first briefly in his novel Doktor Faustus, where the central figure writes a musical puppet play of Gregorius, then later in his fascinating but linguistically and interpretatively difficult Der Erwählte, The Holy Sinner, which is here analysed in detail in terms of the sensitive modern reception of a medieval text, retaining the themes of sin and grace. This novel has given rise to far more recent experimental theatre versions in Poland and New Zealand. The now virtually unknown Austrian dramatist Rudolf Henz used the story, too, as an allegory of recent history, especially the takeover of Austria by the Nazis, in an impressive drama.
Adrian Daub
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520296824
- eISBN:
- 9780520969155
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520296824.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
This introductory chapter provides the necessary context for the two protagonists (Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann), as well as the leading supporting figure (Theodor Adorno). It aims to guide ...
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This introductory chapter provides the necessary context for the two protagonists (Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann), as well as the leading supporting figure (Theodor Adorno). It aims to guide readers through the thicket of acquaintances, old grudges and new anxieties, problems of politics and aesthetics that resonate—sometimes faintly, sometimes clearly—between the lines in the essays and exchanges gathered in this volume. These are, after all, one reason scholars, students, and lay readers have returned to the Faustus controversy time and time again. The other is that rarely has a literary controversy spoken so directly to a unique place and time: Faustus could not have been written, and Faustus could not have generated the controversy that it did, outside of the highly peculiar setting of Southern California during the Second World War.Less
This introductory chapter provides the necessary context for the two protagonists (Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann), as well as the leading supporting figure (Theodor Adorno). It aims to guide readers through the thicket of acquaintances, old grudges and new anxieties, problems of politics and aesthetics that resonate—sometimes faintly, sometimes clearly—between the lines in the essays and exchanges gathered in this volume. These are, after all, one reason scholars, students, and lay readers have returned to the Faustus controversy time and time again. The other is that rarely has a literary controversy spoken so directly to a unique place and time: Faustus could not have been written, and Faustus could not have generated the controversy that it did, outside of the highly peculiar setting of Southern California during the Second World War.
Kevin Newmark
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823240128
- eISBN:
- 9780823240166
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823240128.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Thomas Mann, perhaps the most widely recognized theorist-practitioner of irony in the 20th century, provides a crucial test case for any study of irony. This chapter situates Mann at the far end of ...
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Thomas Mann, perhaps the most widely recognized theorist-practitioner of irony in the 20th century, provides a crucial test case for any study of irony. This chapter situates Mann at the far end of German romanticism and asks how his understanding of irony relates to that of Schlegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. After sketching key elements in his theory of irony, the chapter reads Death in Venice to determine whether Mann's concept of aesthetic detachment can match the ironic forces inscribed within his fiction. The lucidity, self-consciousness, and aloofness of the novella's narrator stand in marked contrast to the confusion, loss of self-understanding, and demise that progressively beset the main character. This divergence between empirical fallibility and the serenity of intellectual comprehension corresponds perfectly to the concept of irony that Thomas Mann proposes throughout his career. Other elements, however, both thematic and rhetorical, ultimately interrupt this correspondence with an irony of a wholly foreign type.Less
Thomas Mann, perhaps the most widely recognized theorist-practitioner of irony in the 20th century, provides a crucial test case for any study of irony. This chapter situates Mann at the far end of German romanticism and asks how his understanding of irony relates to that of Schlegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. After sketching key elements in his theory of irony, the chapter reads Death in Venice to determine whether Mann's concept of aesthetic detachment can match the ironic forces inscribed within his fiction. The lucidity, self-consciousness, and aloofness of the novella's narrator stand in marked contrast to the confusion, loss of self-understanding, and demise that progressively beset the main character. This divergence between empirical fallibility and the serenity of intellectual comprehension corresponds perfectly to the concept of irony that Thomas Mann proposes throughout his career. Other elements, however, both thematic and rhetorical, ultimately interrupt this correspondence with an irony of a wholly foreign type.
Philip Kitcher
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231162647
- eISBN:
- 9780231536035
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231162647.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This book provides a philosophical analysis of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and connects the predicament of the novella's central character to Western thought's most compelling questions. The book ...
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This book provides a philosophical analysis of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and connects the predicament of the novella's central character to Western thought's most compelling questions. The book explains that Mann's work is one of the most widely read novellas in any language. It considers both the novella and a number of other works of art that have been adapted from it, including Benjamin Britten's opera and Luchino Visconti successful film. It describes the main themes of Mann's story, in which the character Gustav von Aschenbach becomes captivated by an adolescent boy, first seen on the lido in Venice, the eventual site of Aschenbach's own death. It explains how Mann uses the story to work through central concerns about how to live, themes that had been explored by his German predecessors, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The book considers how Mann's, Britten's, and Visconti's treatments illuminate the tension between social and ethical values and an artist's sensitivity to beauty. It shows how each work asks whether a life devoted to self-sacrifice in the pursuit of lasting achievements can be sustained and whether a breakdown of discipline undercuts its worth. The book also highlights that Aschenbach's story helps us reflect on whether it is possible to achieve anything in full awareness of our finitude and in knowing our successes are always incomplete.Less
This book provides a philosophical analysis of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and connects the predicament of the novella's central character to Western thought's most compelling questions. The book explains that Mann's work is one of the most widely read novellas in any language. It considers both the novella and a number of other works of art that have been adapted from it, including Benjamin Britten's opera and Luchino Visconti successful film. It describes the main themes of Mann's story, in which the character Gustav von Aschenbach becomes captivated by an adolescent boy, first seen on the lido in Venice, the eventual site of Aschenbach's own death. It explains how Mann uses the story to work through central concerns about how to live, themes that had been explored by his German predecessors, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. The book considers how Mann's, Britten's, and Visconti's treatments illuminate the tension between social and ethical values and an artist's sensitivity to beauty. It shows how each work asks whether a life devoted to self-sacrifice in the pursuit of lasting achievements can be sustained and whether a breakdown of discipline undercuts its worth. The book also highlights that Aschenbach's story helps us reflect on whether it is possible to achieve anything in full awareness of our finitude and in knowing our successes are always incomplete.
Philip Kitcher
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231162647
- eISBN:
- 9780231536035
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231162647.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter begins by clearing away some ideas about the “philosophical backdrop” of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice as a prelude to approaching it from a different philosophical angle. Plato, ...
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This chapter begins by clearing away some ideas about the “philosophical backdrop” of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice as a prelude to approaching it from a different philosophical angle. Plato, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche all hover over Death in Venice. Their fundamental influence on the novella derives from the question central to their major writings: How should one live? The discussions then turn to the novella, which tells of the breakdown of discipline. It presents Mann's anatomy of the breakdown of discipline by highlighting particular episodes and concepts, tracing the ways in which the character Gustav von Aschenbach's will is directed and redirected, and understanding the changes in terms of their deviations from his central conception of himself and of what is valuable. These formulations connect Mann with questions explored by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, with the former's sense of the impossibility of realizing a vision of one's life that would give it worth, particularly with the diagnosis in terms of the blindness and rapacity of the will, and the latter's delineation of the difficulties imposed by culture and history on those who aspire to live well. The chapter hopes to make plausible the thought that Death in Venice exhibits the second grade of philosophical involvement, that it can be read as simultaneously showing, in the milieu of haute bourgeois society, the inevitable failure and frustration of the individual will and the contradiction within the ascetic ideal.Less
This chapter begins by clearing away some ideas about the “philosophical backdrop” of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice as a prelude to approaching it from a different philosophical angle. Plato, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche all hover over Death in Venice. Their fundamental influence on the novella derives from the question central to their major writings: How should one live? The discussions then turn to the novella, which tells of the breakdown of discipline. It presents Mann's anatomy of the breakdown of discipline by highlighting particular episodes and concepts, tracing the ways in which the character Gustav von Aschenbach's will is directed and redirected, and understanding the changes in terms of their deviations from his central conception of himself and of what is valuable. These formulations connect Mann with questions explored by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, with the former's sense of the impossibility of realizing a vision of one's life that would give it worth, particularly with the diagnosis in terms of the blindness and rapacity of the will, and the latter's delineation of the difficulties imposed by culture and history on those who aspire to live well. The chapter hopes to make plausible the thought that Death in Venice exhibits the second grade of philosophical involvement, that it can be read as simultaneously showing, in the milieu of haute bourgeois society, the inevitable failure and frustration of the individual will and the contradiction within the ascetic ideal.
Richard Crouter
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195379679
- eISBN:
- 9780199869169
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195379679.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Chapter 4 of this book argues that Niebuhr as writer and rhetorician draws from literature as much as from history. His gifts honed as preacher yield memorable phrases and ideas that draw from a deep ...
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Chapter 4 of this book argues that Niebuhr as writer and rhetorician draws from literature as much as from history. His gifts honed as preacher yield memorable phrases and ideas that draw from a deep encounter with literary classics (e.g., Greek tragedy, Thomas Mann) and poetry (e.g., Marianne Moore). For him poetic insight comes close to the language of religion in its ability to speak to human quandaries and anxiety in an imperfect world. Niebuhr’s Christian insight is “beyond tragedy” even as it explores the depths and contradictions of human suffering. As a “tamed cynic,” he is suspicious of all tendencies to retreat into an inner mental or spiritual world as done by the classical Stoics and their contemporary secular and religious imitators. As writer, Niebuhr resembles other distinguished writers whose vision is presented “upon occasion” and not as a finished understanding of the way things are or must be.Less
Chapter 4 of this book argues that Niebuhr as writer and rhetorician draws from literature as much as from history. His gifts honed as preacher yield memorable phrases and ideas that draw from a deep encounter with literary classics (e.g., Greek tragedy, Thomas Mann) and poetry (e.g., Marianne Moore). For him poetic insight comes close to the language of religion in its ability to speak to human quandaries and anxiety in an imperfect world. Niebuhr’s Christian insight is “beyond tragedy” even as it explores the depths and contradictions of human suffering. As a “tamed cynic,” he is suspicious of all tendencies to retreat into an inner mental or spiritual world as done by the classical Stoics and their contemporary secular and religious imitators. As writer, Niebuhr resembles other distinguished writers whose vision is presented “upon occasion” and not as a finished understanding of the way things are or must be.
Tobias Boes
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451775
- eISBN:
- 9780801465659
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451775.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This concluding chapter provides an in-depth reading of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, a novel that responds explicitly to the “crisis of historicism” debate that raged in Germany during the interwar ...
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This concluding chapter provides an in-depth reading of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, a novel that responds explicitly to the “crisis of historicism” debate that raged in Germany during the interwar years. A large part of the chapter is devoted to a comparison of Mann's thought to that of Friedrich Meinecke, who was Mann's close contemporary and perhaps the last great practitioner of classical historicism in Germany. At the same time, Mann's high-modernist style is undeniably allegorical in nature, which allows the model of the “performative nationalism” at work in the nineteenth-century Bildungsroman to be contrasted with competing claims on the genre as a “national allegory” that have been advanced by Fredric Jameson and Jed Esty.Less
This concluding chapter provides an in-depth reading of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, a novel that responds explicitly to the “crisis of historicism” debate that raged in Germany during the interwar years. A large part of the chapter is devoted to a comparison of Mann's thought to that of Friedrich Meinecke, who was Mann's close contemporary and perhaps the last great practitioner of classical historicism in Germany. At the same time, Mann's high-modernist style is undeniably allegorical in nature, which allows the model of the “performative nationalism” at work in the nineteenth-century Bildungsroman to be contrasted with competing claims on the genre as a “national allegory” that have been advanced by Fredric Jameson and Jed Esty.
Philip Kitcher
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231162647
- eISBN:
- 9780231536035
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231162647.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter focuses on Gustav von Aschenbach, the main character in Death in Venice. It asks: Does he succeed in fitting the disparate elements of his identity together? Is his life invalidated by ...
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This chapter focuses on Gustav von Aschenbach, the main character in Death in Venice. It asks: Does he succeed in fitting the disparate elements of his identity together? Is his life invalidated by his capitulation to the lure of beauty? Must the artist inevitably succumb to that lure? For Mann, these were crucial questions, and the creation of Aschenbach was part of his long exploration of them, part of his lifelong endeavor to put himself on trial. The chapter suggests that the elaborate trappings of Death in Venice, the echoes of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, allusions to Greek mythology and play with Socratic dialogues, are disguises Mann used to mask a more basic story about the social distortion of sexuality and its costs. Freed from the conventional prejudices Mann accurately ascribed to his contemporaries, readers today can recognize the novella for what it is.Less
This chapter focuses on Gustav von Aschenbach, the main character in Death in Venice. It asks: Does he succeed in fitting the disparate elements of his identity together? Is his life invalidated by his capitulation to the lure of beauty? Must the artist inevitably succumb to that lure? For Mann, these were crucial questions, and the creation of Aschenbach was part of his long exploration of them, part of his lifelong endeavor to put himself on trial. The chapter suggests that the elaborate trappings of Death in Venice, the echoes of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, allusions to Greek mythology and play with Socratic dialogues, are disguises Mann used to mask a more basic story about the social distortion of sexuality and its costs. Freed from the conventional prejudices Mann accurately ascribed to his contemporaries, readers today can recognize the novella for what it is.
Ehrhard Bahr
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520251281
- eISBN:
- 9780520933804
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520251281.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
The city of Los Angeles afforded the refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe a haven from persecution, and a place to live and work until the end of World War II. The presence of these German-speaking ...
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The city of Los Angeles afforded the refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe a haven from persecution, and a place to live and work until the end of World War II. The presence of these German-speaking exiles conferred upon the city the moniker “Weimar on the Pacific.” Los Angeles became the battlefield for the wars of German exile modernism in the 1940s, with Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Heinrich Mann on the left; Alfred Döblin and Franz Werfel on the right; and Thomas Mann and Arnold Schoenberg in the middle. This book is about this distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals and some of their works. It explores topics ranging from Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, to Brecht's lyric poetry and his drama Galileo, immigrant modernism versus exile modernism, the political factions among the exiles with respect to the rise of fascism in Germany, the role of dialectics as a structural element in Mann's novel Doctor Faustus, and the controversy between Mann and Schoenberg regarding the employment of twelve-tone composition in Doctor Faustus.Less
The city of Los Angeles afforded the refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe a haven from persecution, and a place to live and work until the end of World War II. The presence of these German-speaking exiles conferred upon the city the moniker “Weimar on the Pacific.” Los Angeles became the battlefield for the wars of German exile modernism in the 1940s, with Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Heinrich Mann on the left; Alfred Döblin and Franz Werfel on the right; and Thomas Mann and Arnold Schoenberg in the middle. This book is about this distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals and some of their works. It explores topics ranging from Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, to Brecht's lyric poetry and his drama Galileo, immigrant modernism versus exile modernism, the political factions among the exiles with respect to the rise of fascism in Germany, the role of dialectics as a structural element in Mann's novel Doctor Faustus, and the controversy between Mann and Schoenberg regarding the employment of twelve-tone composition in Doctor Faustus.
Ehrhard Bahr
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520251281
- eISBN:
- 9780520933804
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520251281.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In July 1943, newspapers in the United States reported that the National Committee for a Free Germany had been founded by German exiles and German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. The Soviet ...
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In July 1943, newspapers in the United States reported that the National Committee for a Free Germany had been founded by German exiles and German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. The Soviet leadership appeared to be using the committee as, among other things, a political tool to attempt to bring about an early end to World War II, even at the cost of a compromise peace with the German government. A steering committee for the formation of a “Free Germany Movement” was founded in New York in September and October 1943 in order to produce an American alternative to the National Committee for a Free Germany. This chapter looks at the political factions among the exiles with respect to the rise of fascism in Germany, the war against the Axis powers, and the reconstruction of postwar Europe. Thomas Mann introduced a dialectical concept of one Germany, both good and evil. The dialectical conception of Mann's formula provided a more productive approach for dealing with Germany's past and future than that of Robert Gilbert Lord Vansittart.Less
In July 1943, newspapers in the United States reported that the National Committee for a Free Germany had been founded by German exiles and German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. The Soviet leadership appeared to be using the committee as, among other things, a political tool to attempt to bring about an early end to World War II, even at the cost of a compromise peace with the German government. A steering committee for the formation of a “Free Germany Movement” was founded in New York in September and October 1943 in order to produce an American alternative to the National Committee for a Free Germany. This chapter looks at the political factions among the exiles with respect to the rise of fascism in Germany, the war against the Axis powers, and the reconstruction of postwar Europe. Thomas Mann introduced a dialectical concept of one Germany, both good and evil. The dialectical conception of Mann's formula provided a more productive approach for dealing with Germany's past and future than that of Robert Gilbert Lord Vansittart.
Nicholas Attfield
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780197266137
- eISBN:
- 9780191865206
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266137.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This book challenges commonplace conceptions of musical conservatism during Germany’s Weimar Republic (1918–33). Its primary goal is to offer scrutiny of uncritical links often made by musicologists ...
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This book challenges commonplace conceptions of musical conservatism during Germany’s Weimar Republic (1918–33). Its primary goal is to offer scrutiny of uncritical links often made by musicologists and historians between musical conservatism and cultural-political conservatism of the era, and the accompanying tendentious vocabulary of the ‘anti-modern’. It does so chiefly by means of a critical and nuanced application of the term ‘conservative revolution’, as used in the Weimar era and popularized in its historiography after 1945. The introduction introduces the time-honoured notion of ‘Weimar culture’ and its tendency to obscure parts of the contemporary cultural landscape, not least in their relation to modernity and modernism. Chapter 1 considers the problematic status of the term ‘conservative revolution’. Four contrasting studies are then presented, each focused on a particular ‘conservative’ musical figure or movement, and informed by readings of a complex discourse drawn from contemporary journals, speeches, letters, scores, and archival sources. Chapters 2 and 3 address Thomas Mann and his relationship with Hans Pfitzner in the aftermath of the First World War, and Alfred Heuss’s 1920s tenure as editor of Schumann’s Zeitschrift für Musik. Chapters 4 and 5 turn to the so-called ‘Bruckner cult’ of the Weimar era and its representations of its central composer as medieval mystic, and the work of August Halm—another dedicated Brucknerian—within the German youth movement, as defined and proclaimed by the radical pedagogue Gustav Wyneken. An extended epilogue considers advocacy for these Weimar-era musical conservatisms under the Nazi regime after 1933.Less
This book challenges commonplace conceptions of musical conservatism during Germany’s Weimar Republic (1918–33). Its primary goal is to offer scrutiny of uncritical links often made by musicologists and historians between musical conservatism and cultural-political conservatism of the era, and the accompanying tendentious vocabulary of the ‘anti-modern’. It does so chiefly by means of a critical and nuanced application of the term ‘conservative revolution’, as used in the Weimar era and popularized in its historiography after 1945. The introduction introduces the time-honoured notion of ‘Weimar culture’ and its tendency to obscure parts of the contemporary cultural landscape, not least in their relation to modernity and modernism. Chapter 1 considers the problematic status of the term ‘conservative revolution’. Four contrasting studies are then presented, each focused on a particular ‘conservative’ musical figure or movement, and informed by readings of a complex discourse drawn from contemporary journals, speeches, letters, scores, and archival sources. Chapters 2 and 3 address Thomas Mann and his relationship with Hans Pfitzner in the aftermath of the First World War, and Alfred Heuss’s 1920s tenure as editor of Schumann’s Zeitschrift für Musik. Chapters 4 and 5 turn to the so-called ‘Bruckner cult’ of the Weimar era and its representations of its central composer as medieval mystic, and the work of August Halm—another dedicated Brucknerian—within the German youth movement, as defined and proclaimed by the radical pedagogue Gustav Wyneken. An extended epilogue considers advocacy for these Weimar-era musical conservatisms under the Nazi regime after 1933.
Robert K. Weninger
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813041667
- eISBN:
- 9780813043678
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813041667.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter surveys the impact of Joyce’s Ulysses in German-speaking countries from 1922, the year when the Shakespeare & Co. English original was published, to 1945, the end of the Second World War ...
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This chapter surveys the impact of Joyce’s Ulysses in German-speaking countries from 1922, the year when the Shakespeare & Co. English original was published, to 1945, the end of the Second World War and the Nazi period. Particular emphasis is given to the history and reception of Georg Goyert’s 1927 translation of Ulysses and its reception by such German authors as Alfred Döblin, Hans Henny Jahnn, Kurt Tucholsky, Thomas Mann, and Hermann Broch. Further focus is placed on the early academic reception of Ulysses as well as the notorious essay by C. G. Jung and the negative criticisms of Ulysses by Catholic and Nazi literary critics.Less
This chapter surveys the impact of Joyce’s Ulysses in German-speaking countries from 1922, the year when the Shakespeare & Co. English original was published, to 1945, the end of the Second World War and the Nazi period. Particular emphasis is given to the history and reception of Georg Goyert’s 1927 translation of Ulysses and its reception by such German authors as Alfred Döblin, Hans Henny Jahnn, Kurt Tucholsky, Thomas Mann, and Hermann Broch. Further focus is placed on the early academic reception of Ulysses as well as the notorious essay by C. G. Jung and the negative criticisms of Ulysses by Catholic and Nazi literary critics.
Brian Murdoch
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199596409
- eISBN:
- 9780191745737
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199596409.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History, Religion and Literature
The story of the apocryphal pope and saint Gregorius was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages and later in Europe and beyond. In a memorable narrative Gregorius is born from an incestuous ...
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The story of the apocryphal pope and saint Gregorius was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages and later in Europe and beyond. In a memorable narrative Gregorius is born from an incestuous relationship between a noble brother and sister, and is set out to sea with (unspecific) details of his origin. He is found and brought up by an abbot, but when revealed as a foundling, leaves as a knight to seek his origins; he rescues his mother’s land from attack, and marries her. On discovering his sin he undertakes years of penance on a rocky islet, which he survives miraculously. An angel sends emissaries from Rome to find him after the death of the pope, the key to his shackles is equally miraculously discovered, and he becomes pope. This hagiographical romance is not a variation upon Oedipus; it uses the invisible sin of incest as a parallel both for original sin (the sin of Adam and Eve) and for actual sin. It combines the universal theme of the quest for identity with the problem not of guilt as such, which is inevitable, but of how sinful humanity can cope if it avoids despair. The story probably originated in medieval England or France, but is found in versions from Iceland and Ireland to Iraq and Egypt, in verse and prose, in full-scale literary forms or in much-reduced folktales, in theological as well as secular contexts, and more or less continuously down to and even beyond. It is a truly European theme.Less
The story of the apocryphal pope and saint Gregorius was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages and later in Europe and beyond. In a memorable narrative Gregorius is born from an incestuous relationship between a noble brother and sister, and is set out to sea with (unspecific) details of his origin. He is found and brought up by an abbot, but when revealed as a foundling, leaves as a knight to seek his origins; he rescues his mother’s land from attack, and marries her. On discovering his sin he undertakes years of penance on a rocky islet, which he survives miraculously. An angel sends emissaries from Rome to find him after the death of the pope, the key to his shackles is equally miraculously discovered, and he becomes pope. This hagiographical romance is not a variation upon Oedipus; it uses the invisible sin of incest as a parallel both for original sin (the sin of Adam and Eve) and for actual sin. It combines the universal theme of the quest for identity with the problem not of guilt as such, which is inevitable, but of how sinful humanity can cope if it avoids despair. The story probably originated in medieval England or France, but is found in versions from Iceland and Ireland to Iraq and Egypt, in verse and prose, in full-scale literary forms or in much-reduced folktales, in theological as well as secular contexts, and more or less continuously down to and even beyond. It is a truly European theme.
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199604128
- eISBN:
- 9780191729362
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604128.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
The exoticization of places is no more evident than in the case of European locales symbolically rendered mysterious, desirous, and threatening, as occurs in the case of Venice and the Swiss Alps, ...
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The exoticization of places is no more evident than in the case of European locales symbolically rendered mysterious, desirous, and threatening, as occurs in the case of Venice and the Swiss Alps, respectively, in Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig and Der Zauberberg. What these central Mann texts share in common with Zweig’s novella Der Amokläufer is the coupling of the exotic topography with both erotic desire and infection illness. This chapter shows thematically how the infectious-erotic topography, in which protagonists experience a moral downfall or loss of rationality, situates a critique of the self-certain and usually dominant European subject in the face of the foreign other. This chapter further outlines in theoretical terms the ways in which usually familiar or ordinary places can be symbolically exoticized by their association with eros and infection.Less
The exoticization of places is no more evident than in the case of European locales symbolically rendered mysterious, desirous, and threatening, as occurs in the case of Venice and the Swiss Alps, respectively, in Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig and Der Zauberberg. What these central Mann texts share in common with Zweig’s novella Der Amokläufer is the coupling of the exotic topography with both erotic desire and infection illness. This chapter shows thematically how the infectious-erotic topography, in which protagonists experience a moral downfall or loss of rationality, situates a critique of the self-certain and usually dominant European subject in the face of the foreign other. This chapter further outlines in theoretical terms the ways in which usually familiar or ordinary places can be symbolically exoticized by their association with eros and infection.
