Communism and the Avant-Garde in Weimar Germany : : A Selection of Documents / / Ben Fowkes.

• Superior document: Historical Materialism Book Series ; 269
• VerfasserIn: Fowkes, Ben,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden ;, Boston : : Brill,, 2023.; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Historical Materialism Book Series ; 269.; Social Sciences E-Books Online, Collection 2023.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (504 pages)

How did the revolutionary Left view cultural modernists? Their uneasy relationship is illustrated in this book with quotations ranging from Alexander’s ‘Dada is merely an impertinence’ through Trotsky’s ‘There cannot be a proletarian culture’ to Averbakh’s ‘Tear off the masks!’ and Becher’s ‘There can only be one kind of genuine art: fighting art.’ This book covers communist attitudes to the whole field of cultural innovation, from the art of the left abstractionists to the literature of the worker-correspondent movement and the music of Weill and Eisler through to proletarian film, theatre and photography and takes full account of the impact on Weimar left culture of external events, such as the First World War, the ‘Great Change’ in the Soviet Union, and internal German developments such as the failure of revolution after 1918 and the rise of Nazism. Each chapter starts with an introduction that provides a context to the documents and indicates the current state of research.

Table of Contents

Preliminary Material / Ben Fowkes -- Copyright Page / Ben Fowkes -- Preface / Ben Fowkes -- Acknowledgements / Ben Fowkes -- Abbreviations / Ben Fowkes -- Chapter 1 Introduction: The Avant-Garde and Cultural Innovation / Ben Fowkes -- Chapter 2 The German Setting / Ben Fowkes -- Chapter 3 The Shock of War and Its Aftermath / Ben Fowkes -- Chapter 4 Following the ‘Alexander Line’ / Ben Fowkes -- Chapter 5 The Revolt of Art Becomes a Revolt against Art / Ben Fowkes -- Chapter 6 Parallel Developments: The Wider European Context / Ben Fowkes -- Chapter 7 The Soviet Cultural Background: The Debates of the 1920s and Their Relevance / Ben Fowkes -- Chapter 8 The New Start of 1925 in Germany / Ben Fowkes -- Chapter 9 New Forms and New Participants: Worker-Correspondents and Worker-Photographers / Ben Fowkes -- Chapter 10 The Impact of the Great Change: The Attempt to Organise and Unify Proletarian Culture / Ben Fowkes -- Chapter 11 Political, Literary, and Artistic Aspects of the Proletarian Culture Movement / Ben Fowkes -- Conclusion: The End of Weimar and the Coming of Socialist Realism / Ben Fowkes -- Appendix List of Documents by Chapter / Ben Fowkes -- Note on Sources / Ben Fowkes -- Bibliography / Ben Fowkes -- Index / Ben Fowkes.