Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund (1903–69)
Born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund to an Italian Catholic mother and an assimilated Jewish father, Adorno would take his mother’s vaguely aristocratic last name. Philosopher, aesthetician,…
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Modernism in Europe
We are living in a very singular moment of history. It is a moment of crisis, in the literal sense of that word. In every…
Lachenmann, Helmut (Friedrich) (1935--)
One of the most influential composers to emerge from Germany following the post-war avant-garde movement, Helmut Lachenmann has remained committed to the legacy of integral…
Kluge, Alexander (1932--)
Alexander Kluge is a German author, film director, and television producer who has also worked as a lawyer, teacher, and political lobbyist. A founding figure of…
Horkheimer, Max (1895–1973)
Born near Stuttgart, Germany, the philosopher Max Horkheimer, who obtained his doctorate from the University of Frankfurt, is best known as a leader of the…
Modernism and Popular Music
Modernism has an uneasy relationship with popular music and popular culture in general. Many modernist music movements (e.g. the twelve-tone school of Schoenberg) are diametrically…
Propaganda
Propaganda is the term for a variety of communication phenomena developed in the 20th century. As such, its meaning has changed over time from a…
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School (Institute für Sozialforschung) was founded in 1923 by Felix Weil and fellow students Max Horkheimer and Friedrich Pollack, and was originally endowed…
Berg, Alban
Composer Alban Berg (1885–1935) is best-known for his two operas, Wozzeck (premiered 1925) and Lulu (left unfinished but performed in incomplete form until the full…
Kracauer, Siegfried (1889–1966)
Siegfried Kracauer was a German cultural critic and theorist. He wrote film and cultural criticism for the Frankfurter Zeitung in the 1920s and early 1930s.…
Anti-Semitism including the Holocaust
Anti-Semitism, a term coined in Europe at the end of the 19th century, is the hatred of Jews and Jewishness, the latter being perceived in…
Kraus, Karl (1874–1936)
Karl Kraus was a famous literary and cultural critic and a cult figure in Vienna’s intellectual scene around 1900. He was the editor of the…
Collège de Sociologie
A discussion group of French intellectuals established in Paris in March 1937, the Collège de Sociologie lasted until late 1939.
Verfremdungseffekt
Verfremdungseffekt (V-effekt), usually translated as alienation effect (a-effect), is a concept developed by the German poet, playwright, and dramaturg Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956). His V-effekt is…
Late Modernism
Late Modernism is a critics’ term rather than one that artists used themselves. Introducing it in the late 1970s, architectural critic Charles Jencks was probably…
Fondane, Benjamin (1898–1944)
A primarily francophone Jewish poet and writer of Romanian origin, Fondane became known as a critic, poet and dramaturge in Romania before leaving Bucharest for…
Modernist Film Criticism
Criticism is one of the fundamental concepts in Modernism and is defined by “the intensification, almost exacerbation, of [a] self-critical tendency” that began with Kant,…
Mahler, Gustav (1860–1911)
With his deeply autobiographical compositions, composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) bridged late nineteenth-century Romanticism and early twentieth-century Modernism. His symphonies and song cycles traversed techniques of…
Godard, Jean-Luc (1930–)
One of the most important filmmakers in the latter half of the 20th century, Jean-Luc Godard’s reputation remains enduringly linked with the French nouvelle vague…
Communism, Socialism, Marxism, Bolshevism
Communism is first and foremost the reality of long-dismantled or nearly defunct regimes in China, the (former) Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Cuba and North Korea:…