Joachim, Otto (1910–2010)
Born in Düsseldorf and eventually settling in Montreal, Canada, Otto Joachim was a composer, violist, painter, and instrument builder. Joachim fled Nazi Germany in 1934…
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Schmitt, Carl (1888–1985)
A conservative German jurist, political theorist, and Roman Catholic, Schmitt became the most significant legal mind of Weimar and then Nazi Germany. His first major…
Architecture Subject Overview
Modernist architecture and design represented a utopian vision of how the built environment could be adapted to the needs to modern industrial society. Industrialization had…
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…
Expressionism
Expressionism was one of the foremost modernist movements to emerge in Europe in the early years of the twentieth-century. It had a profound effect on…
Eugenics
Eugenics is the attempt to improve human traits through intervention in genetic lines, generally for the stated purpose of increasing the proportion of so-called positive…
Jooss, Kurt (1901–1979)
Kurt Jooss is often understood to be a founding figure in dance theater, both for his choreography Der grüne Tisch (The Green Table, 1932), which…
MARS Group (1933--1957)
The Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS) was a coalition of architects, academics and critics united by the aim to promote modernist architecture in Britain. Founded…
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (1918/1919–1933) is a term used to describe the German Reich (Deutsches Reich) after the end of World War I and after the…
Bergelson, Dovid (1884–1952)
Dovid Bergelson was a major Yiddish prose writer and essayist. He had a lasting impact on Yiddish fiction writing, introducing new narrative techniques such as…
Woodcut Novel
The novel in woodcuts or the wordless novel is an artistic and narrative medium that emerged during the first half of the 20th century. The…
Uthoff, Ernst (1904–1993)
Ernst Uthoff was a German-born dancer, choreographer, and company director who received his dance training from two pioneers of Tanztheater (dance-theater): Kurt Jooss and Sigurd…
Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1922)
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari [Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, 1922] is a silent German Expressionist film made by Robert Wiene, and is considered among the…
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…
Mussolini, Benito (1883–1945)
Known as Il Duce (the Leader), the son of a Marxist blacksmith, Benito Mussolini was the ruler of Fascist Italy (1922–43). A master of populist…
Nazi Modernism
Nazi Modernism is not a contradiction in terms, even if Nazi-era rhetoric and propaganda directed against Entartete Kunst powerfully suggested that this was the case.…
Niebuhr, Reinhold (1892–1971)
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an influential pastor and theologian in America. His thought initially centered on liberal pacifism, but it later turned to the…
S. Fischer Verlag
Founded in Berlin in 1886 by Samuel Fischer, S. Fischer Verlag quickly became one of the most important publishing houses of German and European modernism.…
The Great Depression
Beginning on New York’s Wall Street on October 29, 1929, which would come to be known as ‘Black Tuesday’, the Great Depression was the most…
Marc, Franz (1880–1916)
Franz Marc was born in Munich, Germany in 1880 and died in the battle of Verdun in 1916, one of many of the Great War’s…
Kokoschka, Oskar (1886–1980)
The Austrian painter, graphic artist, writer, and playwright Oskar Kokoschka received distinction as a protégé while still studying at the Viennese School of Applied Arts.…
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.…
Beckmann, Max (1884–1950)
A painter, printmaker, sculptor, and writer, Max Beckmann achieved success at an early age. After studying art in Weimar and spending some months in Paris,…
Mann, Klaus (1906–1949)
Klaus Heinrich Thomas Mann was born in 1906 into Germany’s most famous family of writers, in which, he would later write, ‘everything has already been…
Entartete Kunst
Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) is a term that was used by Nazi authorities to identify, censure, and confiscate art they considered inconsistent with their ideology.…