Transformation of ‘Culture’: From Anti-Fascism to Anti-Totalitarianism

Abstract

Focusing on a selection of reports and comments on a range of international cultural conferences held between 1941 and 1949, this article traces how the deployment of the term ‘culture’ underwent significant changes that tie in with the consolidation and subsequent Cold-War collapse of the anti-fascist consensus. As a consequence of the emergent hegemony of an anti-totalitarian orthodoxy in the Western sphere of influence, the few individuals who, like Olaf Stapledon or Hans Mayer, attempted to mediate between the ideological blocs found themselves increasingly isolated between the enemy lines. The process of polarization that increasingly rendered such individual project futile is manifest in the agendas of the cultural conferences at Wrocław, Paris and New York as well as in the reports and commentary in the most influential German post-war journals.