Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Glasgow
"Eine Epoche ähnlich jener des zu Ende gehenden Mittelalters": die kulturkritische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Mittelalter in der Weimarer Republik ["An Epoch like that of the waning Middle Ages": cultural-critical engagement with the medieval in the Weimar Republic]
The chapter focuses on the period of the Weimar Republic in Germany (1919-1933) in order to investigate the cultural situation leading up to the reception of the Middle Ages under National Socialism (this is the wider theme of the book of collected essays in which the chapter appears). The essay investigates the engagement by artists and theorists on the broad political Left and on the nationalist-conservative Right with the idea and the material culture of the 'medieval'. The author argues that this engagement went beyond an interest in individual artefacts; it constituted a cultural political discourse in which an imagined past was mobilised to diverse contemporary ends.
