Early Twentieth-century Germany Research Articles

Interview With Christian Wachter

Christian Wachter is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Digital History working group at Bielefeld University. He received his Ph.D. for his thesis on hypertext as a medium for digital historiography in 2021. In a current research project, he conducts digitally-assisted discourse analysis, examining political discourse in early twentieth-century Germany.

German Health Narratives between Life Reform and Medical Enlightenment, 1890–1930

This article traces the emergence of the health narrative as a new genre of bodily knowledge in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany. Health narratives were life stories told by or about an individual, either real or fictional, who made conscious choices about how to conduct their bodily existence. Pioneered by lay health seekers known as life reformers, health narratives were co-opted by physicians hoping to reinvent medical enlightenment for the twentieth century. In addition to surveying the variety of forms that health narratives took in adult and children’s literature, the article explores the paradoxes and contradictions that ensued around voice, agency, embodiment, and selfhood as these narratives spread from life reform to medical contexts.

Philology and Responsibility: The Weisse Rose Pamphlets and Classical Quotations

This paper examines the use of classical quotations in the third pamphlet of the Weiße Rose. Looking in detail at their references to Cicero’s On Laws and Aristotle’s Politics, I show their careful selective citational practices and situate those in turn within some of the developments and priorities of the reception of antiquity in early twentieth century Germany. Finally, I use the case of the evaluations of the pamphlets that were commissioned from the classicist Richard Harder shortly before the arrest of the Weiße Rose members to raise questions about philological reading and responsibility.

Wilhelm Reich and Sexology from Below.

One of sexologist Wilhelm Reich's most ambitious and enduring theories claims that sexuality and sexual repression play a central role in the production and reproduction of class structures and hierarchies. From 1927-1933, Reich combined his sexological work with his communist political convictions in a movement that became known as sex-pol. Reich developed some of his most provocative and potentially emancipatory theories through this empirical work with members of working-class communities. Though they often remain anonymous in his writings, the traces of their voices remain audible throughout. In this paper, I employ a Gramscian method, developed by post-colonial scholars, to read for the trace of proletarian voices in Reich's archive. I argue that these subjects helped to theorize the role of sex in producing and reproducing class oppression. Reading for the trace of proletarian voices in the archive expands our understanding of how working-class subjects in early twentieth-century Germany and Austria helped to produce concrete sexological knowledge from below.

Editorial Introduction

Editorial Introduction Edward Timke From Advertising & Society Quarterly’s inception 22 years ago, the journal has closely examined debates about advertising’s role in society, culture, history, and the economy, including how much (or how little) diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) concerns have been taken into account by the advertising industry and corporate America in general. It is not surprising, then, that much of this issue’s content examines DEI issues in advertising from various vantage points. From Emily Contois’ (University of Tulsa) examination of hard seltzer advertising’s attempts to be gender inclusive, to Shu-Chuan Chu’s (DePaul University) in-depth assessment of diversity and multicultural issues in scholarly journals focused on advertising, readers will encounter original research asking important questions about power and privilege in advertising as well as the enterprise of advertising research. Further, despite what the advertising industry has self-professed, this issue’s roundtable presses viewers to think carefully about how inclusive and equitable the industry has become in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the racial reckoning of 2020.1 Additionally, the latest Author Meets Critics installment encourages us to untangle the long, troubled history of large, powerful organizations and individuals exploiting aspirational desires and regulatory loopholes to push dangerous products and ideas on historically marginalized groups of people.2 Several articles underscore the need to contextualize our understanding of advertising today through the application of historical methods. Keith Wailoo (Princeton University), in our Author Meets Critics discussion, explains how various legal cases involving tobacco in the 1990s made decades of internal documents available to the public through large digital archives. Without these lawsuits, such significant historical documents likely would have never seen the light of day for researchers to examine carefully. Rachael Huener’s (Macalester College) original article on miniature advertisements found on small, highly collectible stamps in early twentieth century Germany showcases the ways in which companies and advertisers have used new technologies and creative techniques to draw attention to various products, places, and ideas.3 Jason Chambers (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) shares how he gives his students an opportunity to conduct historical research about major advertising campaigns. By requiring students to package a wealth of information into infographics—digital charts that summarize research through compact visuals—Chambers has found a way to get students excited about and appreciative of historical perspectives on classic ad campaigns. The journal’s third Advertising in Popular Culture discussion assembled scholars with expertise and interest in clandestine modes of persuasion and selling, such as stealth marketing and native advertising.4 In analyzing the 2009 dark comedy The Joneses, starring David Duchovny and Demi Moore, the group explored the ethics of hidden persuasion, as the titular characters take advantage of personal relationships and apply peer pressure to sell products. It delivers a cautionary tale as their neighbors try to “keep up” with the Joneses’ undisclosed marketing and end up in ruin. The issue includes two Key Concepts articles. In the first, Jacqueline Lambiase (Texas Christian University) and Carolyn Bronstein (DePaul University) explain the concept of objectification; a major scholarly and public criticism of advertising over the last half century. Drawing from the significant work of sociologist Erving Goffman and feminist, activist, speaker, and writer Jean Kilbourne, Lambiase and Bronstein show the relevance and dangers of exploiting and depersonalizing people’s bodies through advertisements today. In the second Key Concepts article, I discuss how the theory of technological determinism reveals debates about the power of technology in everyday life. Today, people may blame many of our social, cultural, and political ills on new technological tools, such as smartphones and social media applications. However, if new technologies dictate social and cultural life, critics remind us that people created those technologies in the first place, which, in theory, means that people have the power to regulate and control them. In other words, we are not beholden to manipulative algorithms or addictive advertising-based technologies if we find ways to not let them control us, which might be easier said than done. People need to be knowledgeable about technology’s impacts, who controls technology (and for what purposes), and how they can resist and utilize technology...

Taking Nativism to the Streets

In this article, I give an overview on nativist street protests in Germany from the early nineteenth century to the present from an historical perspective. In a preliminary remark, I will reflect on some recent developments in Germany, where nativist protest campaigns against immigration took place in the streets when voters were turning towards the populist radical right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In the first section, I will outline an older tradition of anti-immigration protest in nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany, which is closely connected to modern antisemitism. In sections two and three, I will retrace how, from the late 1960s onward, the far right in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) discovered concerns about immigration in the German population, addressed them in protest campaigns and developed narratives to integrate such sentiments into a broader right-wing extremist ideology, itself deeply rooted in antisemitism. Studying nativism and the radical right from an actor-oriented perspective, I will focus on traditionalist movements, including the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) and neo-Nazi groups. 

The Moment of Worldwide Renewal: Hillel Zeitlin and the Theosophical Activity in Warsaw 1917–1924

Abstract This article examines the idiosyncratic conduct of the philosopher, journalist and mystic, Hillel Zeitlin (1871–1942). Both Zeitlin's writings and activities are unique or even strange when viewed against the backdrop of the Jewish streets of Warsaw during those years, even when considering other “neo-Hasidic” projects. He published poem-prayers and a personal-mystical diary, founded journals, called for religious and spiritual awakening and tried to start mystical study and prayer groups. Zeitlin's work had a messianic fervor that was lacking in the activity of other Jewish figures. Despite an expansion of scholarly interest in Zeitlin's writings and activities, no satisfactory explanation of his behavior has yet been proposed. This article contextualizes Zeitlin's writing and activities in light of those of various spiritual and esoteric movements that flourished in early twentieth century Poland, Russia and Germany, in particular, those of the Theosophical Societies in Warsaw. He was aware and deeply sympathetic to the various movements of spiritual awakening, and these affected his work profoundly.

Sound in the Papers: Musical Hermeneutics in the Age of the Feuilleton

AbstractThis article examines the intersection of feuilleton writing and musicology in early twentieth-century Germany. Starting from the contemporary concern that music lacked the capacity to expr...

Nazi Science, wartime collections, and an American museum: An object itinerary of theAnthropologie Symbol

AbstractA number of recent works have explored the value of scholarly efforts to “unpack” museum collections and examine the constitutive networks and histories of objects. The interrogations of collections through methods such as object biographies and itineraries imparts important knowledge about the institutions, disciplines, and individuals who made museum collections, contribute to deeper understandings of the roles of objects in creating meaning in and of the world, and suggest implications for future practice and policies. This article examines the object itinerary of a cultural property item of negative heritage: a three-dimensional painted plaster work of craft-art originally designed to symbolize the scientific practice of anthropology in early twentieth-century Germany and later associated with wartime collecting during World War II, the history of American archaeology, and the modern repatriation movement in museums.

The Last Dwelling before the Last: Siegfried Kracauer’s Critical Contribution to the Modernist Housing Debate in Weimar Germany

Abstract In early twentieth-century Germany a population explosion in its big cities created a housing crisis. A widespread and heavily medialized debate prompted a search for solutions and triggered a rhetoric of the last dwelling. From large communal estates to subsistence-level dwellings, a new type of housing was propagated in newspapers, magazines, exhibitions, films, guidebooks, and advertisements. Siegfried Kracauer, architect, journalist, and author, also became engaged in this debate, willfully reinterpreting New Objectivity’s aesthetics of things (Dingästhetik) both in architectural critiques for the Frankfurter Zeitung and in his novel Ginster. This article analyzes Kracauer’s critical contribution to the modernist housing debate in the Weimar Republic.

Kara L. Ritzheimer, ‘Trash’, Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany

Kara L. Ritzheimer, <i>‘Trash’, Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany</i>

The scientist and the advertisement: Reklamegutachten in imperial Germany.

In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany, the integration of product-evaluating certificates and reports (Gutachten) into advertisements triggered repeated condemnations of "advertisement-Gutachten" (Reklamegutachten), and scientists and science administrators introduced various restrictions to prevent the appearance of such documents. At the same time, the provision of Gutachten to private individuals and firms seemed crucial to the success of many private and public laboratories. Some chemical and other professionals, moreover, argued that the authoring and use of Reklamegutachten could represent a "scientific" and, therefore, ethical practice. By examining the contested history of the advertisement-Gutachten, this article reveals how a previously tolerated knowledge service lost its legitimacy in a particular place and period of time, and highlights the challenges of eliminating this practice or restoring its legitimacy afterward. The article also explores how professional scientists' approaches to maintaining a reputation for integrity in the face of commercial and competitive pressures related to the better-known efforts of professionals in other fields, particularly the medical. I emphasize that, in determining whether a Gutachten qualified as scientific, the nature and transparency of the underlying research process was only one of the criteria that were considered, and often not the most significant yardstick. At the same time, however, ideas about the personal and professional/institutional integrity of providers of Gutachten were inextricably connected with assessments of the honesty and objectivity of their research.

The Voice Is the Message: Emotional Practices and Court Rhetoric in Early Twentieth Century Germany

This paper illustrates that emotions were considered a central component of juristic work in German legal thought around 1900, showing how emotional practices of judges were reshaped when they were confronted with new socio-political demands in the early 20th century. It argues that judicial emotions were intensely reflected upon and used by German jurists, especially via court rhetoric and specific politics of voice. It puts forward an understanding of vocal performances as emotional practices that became particularly contested during the first decades of the 20th century. Whereas classical ideals of judicial conduct placed a premium on authority and distance in order to ensure objectivity, a psychologically informed and emotion-based interaction between judges and court attendees came to the fore: the use of rhetoric and the ability of showing, forming, and creating emotions gained relevance. The judge was not only to manage his own emotions, but was conceived of as an active engineer of emotions in court. El artículo ilustra cómo el pensamiento jurídico alemán de alrededor de 1900 consideraba las emociones un componente central del trabajo judicial, y muestra cómo las prácticas emocionales de los jueces cambiaron a tenor de las nuevas demandas sociopolíticas de principios del siglo XX. Se argumenta que los juristas alemanes usaban intensamente las emociones judiciales. Se definen las actuaciones orales como prácticas emocionales que fueron especialmente contestadas en el siglo XX. Mientras los ideales clásicos sobre la conducta de los jueces ponían el acento en la autoridad y la distancia para garantizar la objetividad, después avanzó un modelo de interacción psicológicamente informada y basada en la emoción: el uso de la retórica y la capacidad de mostrar, formar y crear emociones ganó protagonismo. El juez ya no sólo gestionaba sus propias emociones, sino que se convirtió en un ingeniero activo de emociones en el juzgado.

Review: Kinaesthetic Knowing: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Modern Design, by Zeynep Çelik Alexander

Zeynep Celik Alexander Kinaesthetic Knowing: Aesthetics, Epistemology, Modern Design Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017, 336 pp., 10 color and 99 b/w illus. $55 (cloth), ISBN 9790226485201 How do we know what we learn in an architecture or design school? How does visual or other instruction engaging the bodily senses inform the teaching of design as a creative yet iterative, pattern-making process? And what are the epistemological mechanisms that have historically supported such pedagogical practices converting bodily movements, tactile sensations, color tones, and sound signals into painted images, concrete artifacts, and built spaces? In Kinaesthetic Knowing , Zeynep Celik Alexander examines the methodical construction of such knowledge by describing the codification of psychological intuitions into a pedagogical system that has perpetuated itself in design schools over several generations. For decades now, modern architecture has been criticized for its orthogonal logic, disembodied rationality, and overconfidence regarding the power of the mind. Celik Alexander counterargues that twentieth-century art and architectural historians, practicing designers, and visual arts pedagogues drew from the anti-intellectual aesthetics of bodily movement, psychological impulse, and feeling to produce new experiential subjects who drew, built, and shaped artifacts with a presumably natural propensity unmediated by critical reason. She compellingly demonstrates how such an ostensibly unfettered form of creativity was harnessed into didactic regimens, rules, and principles solidified by modern design institutions in early twentieth-century Germany, including the Bauhaus and its epigones in the United States and other parts of the globe. Traversing aesthetics, epistemology, and design education, Kinaesthetic Knowing expands the notion of Gestaltung from the formation of modern artifacts to the shaping of human subjects and the restructuring of areas of knowledge, including scientific and design techniques and their interrelated histories. One of the book's many feats is that it makes the history of psychological aesthetics relevant again for the study of architectural history. Celik Alexander describes not simply an “aesthetics from below”—that is, an aesthetic system informed by the physiological capacities of subjects and material …

Kara L. Ritzheimer. “Trash,” Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany; Guenter Lewy. Harmful and Undesirable: Book Censorship in Nazi Germany.

K<scp>ara</scp> L. R<scp>itzheimer</scp>. <i>“Trash,” Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany</i>; G<scp>uenter</scp> L<scp>ewy</scp>. <i>Harmful and Undesirable: Book Censorship in Nazi Germany</i>.

Trash," Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany by Kara L. Ritzheimer

Trash," Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany by Kara L. Ritzheimer

"Eine Allerweltliebe": Critiquing European Ethnography from within the German Homosexual Emancipation Movement

Activists seeking to decriminalize sex between men in early twentieth-century Germany stressed that homosexuality was natural and found in all human societies. Ethnography played a key role in substantiating this claim. This article examines arguments put forward by Ferdinand Karsch-Haack in his important compilation of five centuries of ethnographic writing, Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der Naturvölker (1911; The same-sex life of natural peoples), and his critique of European ethnographic practice. Karsch outlined how cultural and personal sexual prejudices interfered with scientific, or at least purportedly objective, observation while still upholding the general validity of the data that had been gathered.

Sex and the Scientific Author: M. Vaerting and the Matilda Effect in Early Twentieth‐Century Germany

Sex and the Scientific Author: M. Vaerting and the Matilda Effect in Early Twentieth‐Century Germany

In praise of poverty: the middle-class dwelling and asceticism in early twentieth-century Germany

This article examines the evolution of architectural asceticism in the capitalist economy by focusing on the middle-class dwelling in early twentieth-century Germany. It starts with an analysis of the concept of poverty in bourgeois imagination and how this concept played out in the Wilhelmine middle-class dwelling. Then the Wilhelmine design reform and the debate around the architect Heinrich Tessenow's austere architecture in the years leading up to the First World War are analysed to indicate how middle-class attitudes to poverty were changing. The final part focuses on the transformation of the ascetic discourse in architecture in the years of austerity during the war and its aftermath.

Chthonic Gnosis: Ludwig Klages and His Quest for the Pandaemonic All

The figure of Ludwig Klages is something of a mystery in contemporary esoteric studies in that he is remembered in Germany as a prominent mystic and philosopher yet remains virtually unknown and ignored outside his native country. Klages (1872–1956) was possessed of a keen mind and intellectual gifts, which were the envy of many of his contemporaries, and he authored fourteen books and sixty essays. While he was at first a graphologist by profession, and indeed helped articulate the development of that field, he is remembered instead for his pioneering work in the fields of existential philosophy and cosmology. A recent study examining this role, Chthonic Gnosis, is adapted from the 1970 doctoral dissertation of the late Gunnar Alksnis. The author asserts in the introduction that the intention of the study is to examine “the formative influences on the thought of Klages, especially in the three crucial areas of irrationalism, primitivism, and the subconscious,” “to evaluate his possible role in the developments to Germany,” and finally, “to conclude with a comparison of reactions to Klages as a man and a thinker, attempting to present as many diverse points of view as possible” (57). These goals are well-considered, and Alksnis is wise in his approach of intending to assess the impact of Klages rather than attempting to summarize or assess the value or validity of his views, which would otherwise prove a difficult task.To accomplish his stated purpose, Alksnis divides the book into eight chapters, which chart the early life and rise of Klages, providing an overview of his life, education, and social interactions—namely, his formative friendships and rivalries, both of which Alksnis demonstrates that Klages had in good supply. The first two chapters, the “Introduction” and “The Poetic Years,” provide considerable biographical detail, and while the purpose of the book is not to serve as a biography, the author assumes that the reader is not familiar with the work of Klages and introduces his subject such that one has a sense of his formative years and early adulthood. Chapters 2 through 5 explore the philosophy and cosmology proposed by Klages, while chapters 6 through 8 examine the range of reactions to the work of Klages, including a nuanced consideration of claims that he was involved with or affected by the Nazi regime that he lived through. The book concludes with a reexamination of the original thesis statement.Alksnis shows that Klages had a great appreciation and nostalgia for the distant past, shrouded in the mists of time and hinted at only obliquely in the idea of the “Pelasgian,” which Klages himself described as “the prehistoric ancestors of the European cultural nations whose character we can discover in the images of their gods, their cults, symbols, mysteries, and myths, but which character also survives in quite a few historically proven facts of (promethic) antiquity, consequently viewed in terms of soul to some of its features belonging to prehistory” (103). To a certain extent, Klages's thinking was not very different from that of the celebrated French philologist Dumézil (1898–1986), who was his near-contemporary, in that they shared the idea of an ancient pre-European past that could be detected through the common European myths and symbols that survived past antiquity and into the classical and medieval period in some altered forms. What Dumézil perceived through his knowledge of philology and comparative linguistics, Klages seemed to grasp through his powers of raw intuition. Alksnis also shows that Klages articulated interesting views on the symbol-as-object, which he demonstrated through his conceptualization on the purpose of sacrifice in world religions (113–15). Here, one detects the Pelasgian theme of Klages's thinking, in that he viewed the ritual of sacrifice in Greek and even early Christian culture as an ancient practice in which the sacrifice of the symbol of the deity was essentially no different from the sacrifice of the deity itself, to which simultaneously the sacrifice is being offered. This Pelasgian mystery indicates that death itself is the real intended victim, and that sacrifice ultimately hints at a belief in attaining immortality (115).Nevertheless, Alksnis argues that the “Pelasgian” aspect of Klages's work is part of his greater theory of biocentrism. In short, Klages proposed a gnostic cosmology where the cosmos itself is alive, and where the human is composed of three basic parts: (a) a physical body; (b) a soul, which is an extension of the cosmic Eros (or life essence); and (c) a spirit, which is essentially a parasitic element injected by the demiurgic Being that masquerades as the creator-god of the Abrahamic religious traditions. Alksnis adroitly demonstrates the hostility that Klages felt, like the classical Gnostics, toward the Christian deity, which Klages held responsible for the worst atrocities of colonialism as well as for what he perceived to be the general spiritual and psychological decay of Western culture (90–101). This aspect of Klages's work resonated with several of his contemporaries but also manifests in the work of the current day (German-based) Ecclesia Gnostica Aeterna, a gnostic order that celebrates the mystery of biocentrism.While overall the work is an excellent introduction to Klages, chapter 6 merits rethinking, in that Alksnis purposes to evaluate the relationship of Klages to the National Socialism movement, to Nazi ideology, and to anti-Semitism in general. This is a difficult topic to address, and while Alksnis does not say it so bluntly, one cannot help but feel that Klages, like other intellectuals of his day, may be subject to unfair scrutiny by having lived through the time period itself, much as the Indo-European model of Dumézil has at times been unfairly treated because of the political era in which he wrote. Alksnis takes some pains to consider especially the potential charges of anti-Semitism, of which some have accused Klages, and Alksnis appears to intend to offer a defense of Klages as having been misunderstood or misrepresented (124–27). Specifically, Alksnis argues that Klages was not an anti-Semite but then later shows that he was against miscegenation and was a misanthrope in general (130–31). On the whole, this entire chapter has very valuable insights, but these could have been stated more clearly.This valuable work is enhanced by a foreword by Dr. Paul Bishop, the leading academic expert on Ludwig Klages in the English-speaking world, and an appendix by Dr. Volker Zotz, the Mandalacarya (International Head) of the Arya Maitreya Mandala Order of Tantric Buddhism. The foreword itself assists the volume by expertly introducing the reader to the biography and person of Klages himself, while the appendix examines the influence on German mystic Lama Anagarika Govinda (Hoffman), demonstrating how Klages's thought was something of a bridge, appealing not only to the European mind, but to Dharmic thinking as well. This is no surprise, given Klages's view of the biocentric nature of the cosmos.In summation, Alksnis has provided a valuable service to the field of modern esoteric studies. In keeping with his original thesis statement, he demonstrates the significance of Klages and his work on the philosophy and intellectual culture of early twentieth-century Germany. It is unfortunate that Klages has remained such a marginal figure in the larger European and international understanding of the mystic movements of the period, but this valuable contribution by Alksnis serves admirably to make the English-speaking audience better aware of this significant historical person. This book will be especially useful for courses dealing with mysticism in the twentieth century.