This dissertation investigates how German-language critics articulated and publicly negotiated ideas about music and expressionism in the first five years after World War I. A close reading of largely unexplored primary sources reveals that "musical expressionism" was originally conceived as an intrinsically musical matter rather than as a stylistic analog to expressionism in other art forms, and thus as especially relevant to purely instrumental rather than vocal and stage genres. By focusing on critical reception of an unlikely group of instrumental chamber works, I elucidate how the acts of performing, listening to, and evaluating "expressionist" music were enmeshed in the complexities of a politicized public concert life in the immediate postwar period. The opening chapters establish broad music-aesthetic and sociopolitical contexts for critics' postwar discussions of "musical expressionism." After the first, introductory chapter, Chapter 2 traces how art and literary critics came to position music as the most expressionist of the arts based on nineteenth-century ideas about the apparently unique ontology of music. Chapter 3 considers how this conception of expressionism led progressive-minded music critics to interpret expressionist music as the next step in the historical development of absolute music. These critics strategically—and controversially—portrayed Schoenberg's "atonal" polyphony as a legitimate revival of "linear" polyphony in fugues by Bach and late Beethoven. Chapter 4 then situates critical debates about the musical and cultural value of expressionism within broader struggles to construct narratives that would explain Germany's traumatic defeat in the Great War and abrupt restructuring as a fragile democratic republic. Against this backdrop, the later chapters explore critics' responses to public performances of specific "expressionist" chamber works. Chapter 5 traces reactions to a provocative performance of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, op. 9 (1906) at the Berlin Volksbühne in February 1920. Chapter 6 examines the interplay of musical-aesthetic and sociopolitical issues in critical reception of several postwar concerts that juxtaposed Schoenberg's "expressionist" Chamber Symphony with Franz Schreker's "impressionist" Chamber Symphony (1916). Chapter 7 considers how critics situated performances of Alexander Zemlinsky's Second String Quartet, op. 15 (1916) in relation to ideas about "expressionism" in music. Finally, Chapter 8 considers critical reception of performances of Béla Bartók's Second String Quartet, op. 17 (1917) in the context of two concert series sponsored by "expressionist" journals: the Anbruch-Abende in Vienna (1918) and the Melos-Abende in Berlin (1922 and 1923). Each of these final chapters uses contemporary criticism as a vehicle for a close reading of the relevant musical work, resulting in a portrait of "expressionist" music that is both contextually and musically nuanced.

Die Untersuchung befasst sich mit dem Grundgedanken, dass, trotz der im Friedensvertrag von Versailles festgelegten Aberkennung der deutschen überseeischen Besitzungen, das koloniale Regel- und Wertesystem des Kaiserreichs in der Weimarer Zeit durch die Führungskräfte der kolonialen Behörde weiter aufrechterhalten wurde und so weiterhin wirksam war. Die Führungskräfte sind zugleich als „kulturelle Akteure“ zu betrachten. Die Handlungen der „kulturellen Akteure“ standen nicht nur im nationalen, sondern auch im europäischen Kontext in Zusammenhang mit der Verflechtung zwischen Völkerrecht und Imperialismus. In dieser Dissertation geht es um die Fragen: Innerhalb welcher nationalen und europäischen Regelsysteme lässt sich die koloniale Behörde und ihre Funktionsfähigkeit verorten? Welche kulturellen Praktiken der Behörde können im Umgang sowohl mit den deutschen kolonialen Vereinen und Vereinigungen als auch mit den afrikanischen Zuwanderern festgestellt werden? Zudem soll beleuchtet werden, wie sich die Umorganisation der Behörde nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg und dem Ende des Deutschen Kaiserreiches auf die Kontinuität von Funktion, Inhalt und Zielen der kolonialen Behörde während der Weimarer Republik auswirkte. Der „koloniale Gedanke“ beinhaltet die Kerngedanken des kolonialen Wertesystems des Kaiserreiches und wurde an die soziale Ordnung der Weimarer Zeit angepasst. Die Erforschung des deutschen Kolonialismus erfordert sowohl die Aufstellung einer geeigneten theoretischen Grundlage als auch die Auswahl einer methodischen Vorgehensweise, die kritische wie auch reflektierende Blicke auf die historischen Geschehnisse beinhaltet. Durch die Auswertung und Analyse von historischen Quellen, darunter Archivalien, Verhandlungen des Parlaments und League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission Minutes wurden die kulturellen Praktiken und Handlungsweisen der leitenden Akteure in der kolonialen Behörde beleuchtet. / After the First World War, the victorious European powers acquired Germany’s overseas possessions. The phasing out of the colonial administrative apparatus, established in Berlin during the German Empire, began before the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles during the Paris Peace Conference. By the mid-1920s, the former Colonial Ministry had been transitioned and made a subordinate department. My dissertation focuses on the senior colonial administrators as kulturelle Akteure who were responsible for developing and implementing policies around “der koloniale Gedanke,” which advanced domestic and foreign policy goals of successive governments during the Weimar Republic. Employing the methodology of Quellenanalyse, I analyze primary unpublished and published sources, including interdepartmental correspondence, the proceedings of the parliament, and the League of Nations’ Permanent Mandates Commission Minutes. The main research themes center on the continuity of administrative functions, policies and goals; the central function of colonial cultural norms and values, the presence and status of African immigrant groups and individuals; and the intersection of international law and imperialism. Indeed, I argue that as a theoretical framework, Die Hegemonie der ‘Europäischen Kulturgemeinschaft’ supports a paradigm shift for both the disciplines of History and Cultural Anthropology from a position of “if” to a critical analysis of “how” European states, especially the German Empire, established its system of imperialism on the African continent. It also contends that books and articles written by senior colonial actors as well as African and African Diasporic actors offer a more nuanced and multifaceted colonial narrative than previously known. Moreover, senior colonial administrators based their fundamental assumptions on colonial cultural norms and values, revealing the importance of German colonial afterlives to interwar politics in and beyond the nation.

[pt] O presente estudo tem como objetivo realizar uma análise simultaneamente histórica e conceitual sobre as percepções de Walter Benjamin sobre o direito e a política situando-as no contexto histórico da República de Weimar (1918/9-1933). Através dessa análise articulada, trata-se de expor os traços principais do debate proposto por Benjamin, analisando seus escritos que enfrentam a discussão sobre o direito e a política, seus embates em torno da noção de estado de exceção, e sua relação com a filosofia da história do autor. Será importante também desdobrar tais reflexões, indicando os questionamentos colocados, as inflexões sofridas em relação ao seu pensamento anterior e a incorporação de novas questões. Benjamin será, portanto, analisado tendo como referência o seu próprio tempo, indicando-se também suas especificidades como autor e as respostas dadas a esse tempo que o particularizam. A hipótese central do presente trabalho é que para uma melhor compreensão dos escritos políticojurídicos de Benjamin é fundamental a análise conjunta do contexto de onde emergiram, reconhecendo que os problemas levantados pelo autor vão além dele, e que a partir daquele contexto determinado levantou questões que dizem respeito à tendências da própria modernidade, e que ainda são, portanto, questões do nosso tempo. / [en] This study aims to conduct both a historical and a conceptual analysis of Walter Benjamin s perceptions on law and politics, locating them in the historical context of the Weimar Republic (1918/9 - 1933 ). Through this articulated analysis, the purpose is to expose the main features of Benjamin s debates, analyzing his writings that face the discussions on law and politics, the struggles around the concept of state of exception, and its relation with author s philosophy of history.It will also be important to unfold such reflections, indicating the questions posed, the inflections incurred in relation to his previous thought and the incorporation of new issues. Benjamin will therefore be analyzed with reference to his own time, indicating as well his specificities as author and the answers given to this time that particularizes him.The central hypothesis of this study is that for a better understanding of Benjamin s political and legal writings is fundamental to analyse them together with the context from which they emerged, recognizing that the problems raised by the author go beyond him and, from that particular context, he lifted questions concerning particular tendencies of modernity which still are issues of our time.

There are surprisingly detailed similarities between Germany and the USA on their way towards the Second World War. In this paper, I have compared the nations' expansionist philosophies, their encounter with racism, and the internal conflicts between authoritarian leadership and democracy. I began with an overview of Manifest Destiny and the German myth of the East. Next, I summed up the deep changes that the First World War caused for both societies and how they went into the Great Depression. I examined the rise of scientific racism as part of the international eugenics movement and the emergence of populist leaders during the economic crisis. It became clear that neither expansionism nor racism were genuine German ideologies. In fact, the American Manifest Destiny served as a role-model for German plans in the East. Even the racist concepts of the Third Reich were strongly influenced by American scientists. The main difference seems to be the experience with the First World War and the diversity of American protest during the crisis.

Ce mémoire porte sur les représentations de la masculinité traumatisée dans le cinéma expressionniste allemand. Le traumatisme de la Première Guerre mondiale occasionne, en Allemagne, l’ébranlement des identités genrées individuelles et de l’identité masculine nationale. Par le biais de l’analyse de cinq films expressionnistes (Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1920 ; Nosferatu, Wilhelm Murnau, 1922; Die Nibelungen, Fritz Lang, 1924 ; Orlacs Hände, Robert Wiene, 1924 ; Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927), le présent mémoire étudie à la fois l’expression du genre, du traumatisme et de l’Histoire nationale. Nous y envisagerons l’image filmique comme un lieu de conflits et de compromis. C’est particulièrement par le biais des enjeux de contrôle, des corps et de leur économie et des dynamiques d’agentivité dans les rapports hommes-femmes que se manifeste l’ébranlement de la masculinité allemande d’après-guerre. Si certaines œuvres confrontent les anxiétés masculines de l’époque en traitant frontalement des traumatismes liés à la guerre et au bouleversement de la place de l’homme dans la société d’après-guerre, d’autres s’appliquent plutôt à rétablir une masculinité d’avant-guerre par l’expression de fantasmes nationaux et individuels de pouvoir et de virilité. En privilégiant une approche psychanalytique du cinéma, ce mémoire s’intéresse notamment aux mécanismes de défense qui transparaissent dans les œuvres. Il s’agit, tout compte fait, de comprendre comment le cinéma négocie avec le genre suite au traumatisme, et comment la temporalité peut influencer cette négociation. / This thesis focuses on representations of traumatized masculinity in German Expressionism. In Germany, trauma caused by the First World War unsettled individual gender identities and upset national conceptions of male identity. The thesis examines issues of gender, trauma and national history in five Expressionist films (Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1920; Nosferatu, Wilhelm Murnau, 1922; Die Nibelungen, Fritz Lang, 1924; Orlacs Hände, Robert Wiene, 1924; Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927). These films comprise notable embodiments of conflict and compromise. It is argued that the disruption of German masculinity after the war registers in them by way of issues related to control, corporeality and gender relations. Contemporary anxieties about masculinity are tackled differently in the films, with some directly addressing themes of war trauma, emasculation and the postwar disruption to men’s traditional social roles and others seek to re-establish pre-war notions of manhood through expressing national and individual fantasies of power and virility. Drawing on a psychoanalytic approach to cinema, this thesis examines how defence mechanisms operate in the films. Key aims are to understand how Expressionist cinema addresses the impact of trauma on masculine identity and also how its approach to articulating trauma shifts through time.

<p>Slutgiltigt godkännandedatum: 2022-10-03</p>

Am Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs lebte in Deutschösterreich und im Deutschen Reich mit dem Zerfall der Habsburgermonarchie und den Revolutionen im November 1918 die Erinnerung an die 48er-Revolution wieder auf. Die Revolutionserinnerung wurde insbesondere von den deutsch-österreichischen Sozialdemokraten zur Legitimierung der Forderung nach dem Anschluss an das Deutsche Reich herangezogen. Da die Vollziehung des Anschlusses jedoch am Einspruch der westlichen Siegermächte scheiterte, konnte im Deutschen Reich eine mit der Anschlussforderung eng verknüpfte Geschichtspolitik mit der 48er-Revolution von Sozialdemokraten und Demokraten wenig zur Legitimierung der Weimarer Republik beitragen (während die Anschlussforderung in Deutschösterreich gerade darauf zielte, die Eigenstaatlichkeit aufzuheben). Vielmehr wurde die Kritik am reichsdeutschen Rat der Volksbeauftragten, in Reaktion auf die deutschösterreichische Anschlusserklärung vom 12. November 1918 den Anschluss nicht vollzogen zu haben, zu einem politischen Allgemeinplatz. Träger der Geschichtspolitik mit der 48er-Revolution blieben in beiden Republiken ganz überwiegend die Arbeiterparteien, wobei im Reich Sozialdemokraten und Kommunisten dabei völlig entgegengesetzte Ziele verfolgten. Auch einen geschichtspolitischen Konsens zwischen reichsdeutschen Sozialdemokraten und Demokraten gab es nicht, wie sich schon in der Abstimmung über die Flaggenfrage am 3. Juli 1919 zeigte. / At the end of World War I, as the Habsburg Monarchy fell apart, the memory of the revolution of 1848 was revived in German-Austria and the German Empire by the new revolutions of November 1918. The revolution of 1848 was drawn on particularly by the German-Austrian social democrats to legitimize their demand to unite German-Austria with the German Empire (the so-called “Anschluss”). When the victorious Western powers prevented the realization of the Anschluss, the attempts by social democrats and democrats in the German Empire to use the memory of the revolution of 1848 to legitimize the new Weimar Republic had only little success because they were closely related to the demand for the Anschluss of Austria (whereas in Austria of course the demand for the “Anschluss” aimed at ending the existence of German-Austria as an independent state). Rather, it became common place in the Weimar Republic to criticize the “Rat der Volksbeauftragten” (the revolutionary government of 1918-1919) for not having realized the Anschluss in response to its declaration by the German-Austrian provisional national assembly on November 12, 1918. The workers’ parties were first and foremost those who continued to keep the memory of the revolution of 1848 in both republics alive. However, in doing so, social democrats and communists in the German Empire persued opposing political objectives. Moreover, there was neither a consensus between social democrats and democrats in the Weimar Republic in regards to the memory of the revolution of 1848. This lack of agreement was already apparent in the decision of the national assembly concerning the flag of the new republic on July 3, 1919.

The endeavor of this thesis is to throw light on the portrayal of women by the Austrian-Jewish writer Joseph Roth. Roth’s women are regarded as highly negative and thus the author has increasingly been judged a male chauvinist and misogynist. This opinion seems particularly questionable since hardly any studies on his fictitious women have ever been conducted. The present study aims at filling that void and thereby presenting Roth’s views in a more differentiated manner. A new approach to Roth is thus called for. The analysis draws from the socio-historic background in which Roth’s work is situated. In his journalism as in his fiction, Roth strived to demonstrate and deal with the challenges of the times he lived in. His work frequently revolves around the “damaged” post-war generation in the 1920s and 30s, the feeling of being literally and metaphorically homeless. His later works are mostly set in the past, although this should not be viewed as escapism but as an attempt to come to terms with present reality. The worlds he portrays are dominated by men who are neither whole nor strong. But although women are few and it is said they are depicted only in crude stereotypes, the study shows that Roth does address their problems and plights. By observing women within established types, modern and traditional, it is revealed that Roth indeed shows depth when characterizing women, and that his interest in them is to use them as examples to illustrate fundamental aspects of the human condition. Rather than portraying them subservient to man, Roth demonstrates their common humanity. His understanding for the condition of women in his times often becomes apparent only when the narrative perspective is isolated from the protagonists. Simultaneously his work presents a valuable literary contribution for Gender Studies. / Classics & Modern European Languages / (D. Litt. et Phil.) (German)

This thesis looks at a number of Jakob Wassermann’s novels and the ways in which society is depicted in them. Seen as a whole, Wassermann’s oeuvre can therefore be understood as an attempt to portray (mostly) German society at different historical stages. The periods in question are Biedermeier Germany, the Wilhelmine era, the years of the Great War and finally the Weimar Republic, the depiction of all of which reveal Wassermann as a fierce critic of his time. In addition to this interest in society, this thesis will examine Wassermann’s concern with various outsider figures which complement his portrayals of society. The outsider figures Wassermann seems to be mostly interested in are the Jew, the woman, the child and the homosexual man. However, Wassermann is not just interested in these outsiders on their own but also draws extensive parallels between the various forms of exclusion they experience in a society dominated by the Gentile man or, as in the case of the child, by the adult. These parallels have proven to be revelatory and have led to new insights into Wassermann’s works. The dynamic of the outsider vs. society is, however, in many ways no longer applicable to those novels written during and after the Great War. Instead Wassermann now combines his interest in the figure of the outsider with an interest in the depiction of character. At the same time character becomes a mirror not only for the society Wassermann portrays in his writing but also for the society he lived in. This makes for an altogether more complex but also more intriguing structure of his later writing. This thesis will examine how all these different elements when combined offer new ways of looking at Wassermann’s writing.

Dans son ouvrage Shell Shock Cinema, publié en 2009, Anton Kaes se distancie fortement du travail fondateur et classique de Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, publiée en 1947, et portant sur le cinéma pendant la période de Weimar. Réfutant la thèse de Kracauer selon laquelle un inconscient collectif allemand annonce la montée du nazisme dans le cinéma de l’entre-deux-guerres, Kaes affirme au contraire que le shell shock, héritage de la Première Guerre mondiale, est l’un des moteurs du cinéma weimarien. Les travaux de Kaes s’inscrivent dans une historiographie en renouvellement qui, confrontant également la thèse de Kracauer, met désormais l’accent sur la Première Guerre mondiale, et non sur la Seconde Guerre mondiale, pour mieux comprendre et analyser le cinéma weimarien. Ce mémoire, tout en étudiant de façon détaillée l’historiographie du sujet, tend à approfondir et à réévaluer la thèse d’Anton Kaes en l’exposant à davantage de films représentant des traumatismes personnels, des traumatismes sociaux et des chocs post-traumatiques (CPT). Ces maux sont exacerbés par des tensions sociopolitiques – insurrection de janvier 1919, Traité de Versailles, occupation de la Ruhr, l’inflation de 1923-24, etc. – alimentant à la fois des représentations symboliques et concrètes d’expériences traumatisantes qui caractérisent l’ensemble du cinéma weimarien. / Anton Kaes’ 2009 Shell Shock Cinema made a clear shift from Siegfried Kracauer’s 1947 classic book, From Caligari to Hitler. Refuting Kracauer’s major thesis – which found hints of the rise of Nazism through an analysis of Weimar cinema – Kaes placed shell shock as a primary source of influence on the 1920’s German movies. Recent research takes a new look at Kracauer’s thesis and its significance, emphasizing the First World War, and not the Second World War, as the new cornerstone of studies on Weimar Cinema. This paper, while conducting a thorough review of literature on the subject, seeks to reconsider Kaes’ thesis, expending it to a larger filmography selected for its numerous representations of personal trauma, social trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These mental troubles are exacerbated by socio-political tensions, – such as the Versailles Peace Treaty, the Ruhr occupation, the January 1919 insurrection and the inflation of 1923-24, – feeding both symbolic and concrete depictions of traumatic experiences throughout the Weimarian cinema.