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…
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Intellectual Currents
This section focusses on the historical, sociological, philosophical, economic, political, and scientific context of modernism. Entries cover individuals, coteries, movements, and events. The primary criterion…
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…
Sørensen, Villy (1929–2001)
Villy Sørensen was a prominent intellectual figure of 20th-century Denmark. His work spanned social commentary, philosophy, and literature. He was a sophisticated literary critic, author…
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.…
Leitmotif
A leitmotif (from the German Leitmotiv: ‘guiding motif’) in its original sense is a musical theme that appears multiple times over the course of a…
Dehmel, Richard (1863–1920)
Richard Dehmel was a German poet and author and a member of the Schwarzes-Ferkel-Kreis (the Black Piglet circle). Viewed from a twenty-first-century perspective, his importance…
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,…
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…
Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939)
Sigmund (Sigismund Schlomo) Freud was an Austrian psychiatrist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who systematized theories of the unconscious and psychosexual development. Freud published case…
Broch, Hermann (1886–1951)
Hermann Broch is best known as a philosophically attuned novelist. Above all he is the author of two extraordinarily accomplished works of European modernist fiction:…
Neue Sachlichkeit in Visual Arts [New Objectivity in Visual Arts]
Neue Sachlichkeit, which can be translated as “New Objectivity,” was the name given to a tendency in painting which, from about 1921 on, returned to…
Modernism in Austria-Hungary
Modernism in Austria-Hungary developed in the imperial capital Vienna and other major cities such as Prague, Budapest, and Trieste. In the coffees houses of these…
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…