The Age of Anxiety
McKay Chapter 28: 1920s Europe
Europe in 1919
Uncertainty in modern thought
•
•
Effects of WWI:
Intellectual crisis:
–
In philosophy, psychology, literature, etc.
–
Questioned liberal beliefs that had guided
intellectuals since the Enlightenment
•
•
•
Rejected:
– progress & reason
– existence of a knowable orderly
“Newtonian” society
Philosophers (writers):
– Attacked optimism of pre-1914
– Noted irrational and violent element of
human behavior
Paul Valéry’s Crisis of the Mind (p. 922):
– Wrote about the crisis of the cruelly
injured mind
– Claimed war ("storm") had left a "terrible
uncertainty"
Valery is
noted for
his
ruthless
and
harshly
realistic
depictions
of Weimar
society and
of the
brutality of
war
Modern philosophy
•
Traditional belief in progress and
the rational human was attacked
by Nietzsche, Bergson, and Sorel
before 1914
• Friedrich Nietzsche
– believed that Western
civilization was in decline
– Weakened by Christianity
– “Slave Morality” which
praised humility, the weak
– W. Civ overstressed
rational thinking at the
expense of emotion and
passion
Nietzsche:
“God is dead.”
Western Christians no longer really
“believed”
N. believed that a few superior supermen
had to become the leaders of the herd of
inferior people
Very influential among German radicals
(later influenced Hitler)
Modern philosophy
•
Logical empiricism
– claimed that philosophy was
nothing more than the logical
clarification of thoughts,
language
• Called for
– Moral, ethical, religious
questions are not "cognitively
meaningful" because they can
not be proven
• could not answer the great
issues of the ages such as the
meaning of life
Ludwig Josef
Johann
Wittgenstein
Existentialism:
stressed that humans can overcome the
meaninglessness of life by individual action
individuals create the meaning and essence of
their lives, as opposed to deities or authorities
creating it for them
Absence of a transcendent force (such as God)
means that the individual is entirely free, and,
therefore, ultimately responsible.
Up to humans to create an ethos of personal
responsibility outside any branded belief
system
•Most famous were French existentialists, Sartre
and Camus, who became “big” only after WW II
The revival of Christianity
•
Christianity under attack since
Enlightenment
• Before WWI theologians tried
harmonize religious belief with
scientific
• A revitalization of fundamental
Christianity took place after World
War I
– Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
revived
• criticized the worldliness of
the church and stressed
commitment to a remote and
majestic God
Karl Barth (1886-1968)
stressed the imperfect and sinful nature of man
Man can not “reason out” God’s ways
T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis & other literary figures were
caught in in revival
Graham Green
“One began to believe in heaven because
one believed in hell.”
The new physics
•
Pre-1920 physics was based on a
Newtonian weltanschauung
– World machine
– Planck and Einstein undermined belief
in constant natural laws
• Plank
– work with subatomic energy
showed that atoms were not the
basic building blocks of nature
• Einstein
– E=MC2
Prof. Albert
– postulated that time and space
Einstein,
are relative
» They can be altered (curved) Princeton U.
with energy
» the universe is infinite
– matter and energy are
interchangeable
Rutherford:
Atom was not smallest, solid
matter
Identified subatomic particles
(neutron)
new physics
instead of Newton's rational
laws, there are only
tendencies
The world was not a perfect
predictable harmonious
machine!!!!
Freudian psychology
•
Prior to Freud, it was assumed
that the conscious mind
processed experiences in a
rational and logical way.
• According to Freud, human
behavior is basically irrational.
– The key to understanding the
mind is the irrational
unconscious (the id), which
is driven by sexual,
aggressive, and pleasure
seeking desires.
Freud:
Behavior is a compromise between the needs of
the id and the rationalizing conscious (the ego),
which mediates what a person can do, and
ingrained moral values (the superego), which tell
what a person should do.
Instinctual drives can easily overwhelm the
control mechanisms; yet rational thinking and
traditional moral values can cripple people with
guilt and neuroses.
Many interpreted Freudian thought as an
encouragement of an uninhibited sex life.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
Twentieth century literature
• The postwar moods of pessimism, relativism,
and alienation influenced novelists.
• Literature focused on the complexity and
irrationality of the human mind
• Writers such as Proust embraced
psychological relativity--the attempt to
understand oneself by looking at one's past
• Novelists such as Woolf, Faulkner, and Joyce
adopted the stream-of-consciousness
technique, in which ideas and emotions from
different time periods bubble up randomly
• Some literature, such as that of Spengler,
Kafka, and Orwell, was anti-utopia--it predicted
a future of doom.
Modern painting
•
French
impressionism
replaced with to
nonrepresentational
expressionism
– sought to
portray the
worlds of
emotion and
imagination
– Van Gogh,
Gauguin,
Cézanne, and
Matisse
Vincent
van
Gogh
Starry
Night
1889
Paul
Gauguin
Tahitian
Women [On
the Beach])
1891
Themes in Early Modern Art
1. Uncertainty/insecurity.
2. Disillusionment.
3. The subconscious.
4. Overt sexuality.
5. Violence & savagery.
Edvard Munch: The Scream (1893)
Expressionism
 Using bright
colors to
express a
particular
emotion.
Franz Marc: Animal Destinies (1913)
Gustav Klimt:
Judith I (1901)
Secessionists
 Disrupt the
conservative values
of Viennese society.
 Obsessed with the
self.
 Man is a sexual
being, leaning
toward despair.
Gustav Klimt: The Kiss (1907-8)
Georges Braque: Violin & Candlestick (1910)
CUBISM
 The subject matter is
broken down, analyzed, and
reassembled in abstract
form.
 Cezanne  The artist
should treat nature in
terms of the cylinder, the
sphere, and the cone.
Georges Braque:
Woman with a
Guitar
(1913)
Pablo Picasso:
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)
Picasso: Studio with Plaster Head (1925)
Pablo Picasso:
Guernica (1937)
George Grosz
Grey Day
(1921)
DaDa
 Ridiculed contemporary
culture & traditional art
forms.
 The collapse during
WW I of social and
moral values.
 Nihilistic.
George Grosz
The Pillars
of Society
(1926)
Raoul Hausmann: ABCD (1924-25)
Marcel Duchamp: Fountain (1917)
Marcel Duchamp:
Nude Descending a
Staircase
(1912)
Salvador Dali: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition
of Civil War), 1936
Surrealism
 Late 1920s-1940s.
 Came from the nihilistic
genre of DaDa.
 Influenced by Feud’s
theories on
psychoanalysis and the
subconscious.
 Confusing & startling
images like those in
dreams.
Salvador Dali:
The Persistence of Memory (1931)
Salvador Dali: The Apparition of the Face and Fruit Dish
on a Beach (1938)
Salvador Dali: Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of a
New Man (1943)
Walter Gropius: Bauhaus Building (1928)
Bauhaus
 A utopian quality.
 Based on the ideals
of simplified forms
and unadorned
functionalism.
 The belief that the machine economy could deliver
elegantly designed items for the masses.
 Used techniques & materials employed especially in
industrial fabrication & manufacture  steel,
concrete, chrome, glass.
Walter Gropius: Lincoln, MA house (1938)
Charlie
Chaplin
“The
Tramp”
Movies and radio
•
•
•
The general public embraced
movies and radio
enthusiastically.
The movie factories and stars
such as Mary Pickford, Lillian
Gish, Douglas Fairbanks,
Rudolph Valentino, and Charlie
Chaplin created a new medium
and a new culture.
Movie going became a form of
escapism and the main
entertainment of the masses.
Radio, which became possible with Marconi's "wireless"
communication and the development of the vacuum
tube, permitted transmission of speech and music, but
major broadcasting did not begin until 1920.
Then every country established national broadcasting
networks; by the late 1930s, three of four households
in Britain and Germany had a radio.
Dictators and presidents used the radio for political
propaganda.
Movies also became tools of indoctrination
In Germany, Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will
propaganda film for Hitler
The Mass Media
The search for peace and political stability
•
•
The search for peace was difficult: Germany
hated the Treaty of Versailles, France was
fearful and isolated, Britain was
undependable, and the United States was
not interested. Besides, Eastern Europe was
in ferment and the international economy
was disrupted and poor.
Yet, from 1925 to late 1929, it appeared that
peace and stability were within reach. But the
collapse of the 1930s ended that quest.
•
Germany and the Western powers
Germany was the key to lasting peace, and
the Germans hated the Treaty of Versailles.
• France believed that an economically weak
Germany was necessary for its security and
wanted massive reparations to repair
devastated northern France.
• Britain needed a prosperous Germany in
order to maintain the British economy.
– J. M. Keynes, an economist, argued that
the Versailles treaty crippled the European
economy and needed revision.
– His attack on the treaty contributed to guilt
feelings about Germany in Britain.
– As a result, France and Britain drifted
apart.
Germany and the Western powers
• When Germany refused to continue its heavy
reparations payments, French and Belgian
armies occupied the Ruhr (1923).
• The Germans stopped work in the factories,
and France occupied the German Rhineland;
this left many Germans unemployed.
– Inflation skyrocketed; prices soared and
savings were wiped out.
– Resentment and political unrest among
the Germans grew; many blamed the
Western governments, and some blamed
the Jews and communists.
• Under Stresemann, Germany agreed to
revised reparations payments, and France
agreed to re-examine Germany's ability to
pay.
– Stresemann represented a new
compromising mood in both Germany and
France.
Hope in foreign affairs (1924-1929)
•
•
•
•
•
The Dawes Plan (1924) provided a solution to the
reparations problem: the United States lent
money to Germany so it could pay France and
Britain so they could pay the United States.
In 1929, the Young Plan further reduced German
reparations.
The treaties of Locarno (1925) eased European
disputes.
– Germany and France accepted their common
border.
– Britain and Italy agreed to fight either France
or Germany if either country invaded the other.
Germany joined the League of Nations in 1926.
The Kellogg Briand Pact (1928) condemned war,
and the signing states agreed to settle
international disputes peacefully.
Hope in democratic government
•
The Ruhr crisis saw the emergence of the radical
right under Hitler; his beer hall plot failed, but he
set out his theories in Mein Kampf.
• But after 1923, democracy took root in Germany
as the economy boomed.
• However, there were sharp political divisions in
the country.
– The right consisted of nationalists and
monarchists.
– The communists remained active on the left.
– Most working-class people supported the
socialist Social Democrats.
In France, the democratically elected government
rested in the hands of the middleclass oriented
moderates, while communists and socialists battled
for the support of the workers.
Northern France was rebuilt, and Paris became the
world's cultural center.
Britain's major problem was unemployment, and the
government's efforts to ease it led the country
gradually toward state sponsored welfare plans.
Britain's Labour party, committed to revisionist
socialism, replaced the Liberals as the main
opposition party to the Conservatives.
Labour, under MacDonald, won in 1924 and 1929,
yet moved toward socialism gradually.
The Great Depression (1929-1939)
•
•
The depression of 1929-1939 was worldwide and long
lasting--and it caused many to turn to radical solutions.
The economic crisis
–
The depression began with the American stock
market crash (October 1929).
•
Net investment in factories and farms fell while
share prices soared.
•
Many investors and speculators had bought stocks
on margin (paying only a small part of the
purchase price and borrowing the rest from their
stockbrokers).
•
When prices started to fall, thousands of people
had to sell their shares at once to pay their
brokers, and a financial panic started.
Financial crisis led to a decline in
production, first in the United States and
then in Europe, and an unwise turn to
protective tariffs.
The absence of international leadership and
poor national economic policies added to
the depression.
Mass unemployment:
As production decreased, workers lost
their jobs and had no money to buy
goods, which cut production even more.
Mass unemployment also caused great
social and psychological problems.
The Scandinavian response to
Depression
•
•
•
Backed by a strong tradition of community
cooperation, socialist parties were firmly
established in Sweden and Norway by the
1920s.
Deficit spending to finance public works and
create jobs was used to check unemployment
and revive the economy after 1929.
Scandinavia's welfare socialism, though it
depended on a large bureaucracy and high
taxes, offered an appealing middle way
between capitalism and communism or
fascism in the 1930s.
Recovery and reform in Britain and France
•
•
Britain's concentration on its national
market aided its economic recovery--so
that by 1937 production had grown by 20
percent.
Government instability in France
prevented recovery and needed reform.
– The Socialists, led by Blum, became the
strongest party in France, and his Popular
Front government attempted New Deal-type
reforms.
– France was drawn to the brink of civil war, and
Blum was forced to resign (1937), leaving the
country to drift aimlessly……………………….