Weimar on the Pacific : German exile culture in Los Angeles and the crisis of modernism / Ehrhard Bahr.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bahr, Ehrhard.

Series:

Weimar and now ; 41.

Weimar and now : German cultural criticism ; 41

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Modernism (Aesthetics)--California--Los Angeles.

Modernism (Aesthetics).

Germans--California--Los Angeles--Intellectual life.

Germans.

Jews, German--California--Los Angeles--Intellectual life.

Jews, German.

Los Angeles (Calif.)--Intellectual life--20th century.

Los Angeles (Calif.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xvii, 358 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2007.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the 1930's and 40's, Los Angeles became an unlikely cultural sanctuary for a distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals-including Thomas Mann, Theodore W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, and Arnold Schoenberg-who had fled Nazi Germany. During their years in exile, they would produce a substantial body of major works to address the crisis of modernism that resulted from the rise of National Socialism. Weimar Germany and its culture, with its meld of eighteenth-century German classicism and twentieth-century modernism, served as a touchstone for this group of diverse talents and opinions. Weimar on the Pacific is the first book to examine these artists and intellectuals as a group. Ehrhard Bahr studies selected works of Adorno, Horkheimer, Brecht, Lang, Neutra, Schindler, Döblin, Mann, and Schoenberg, weighing Los Angeles's influence on them and their impact on German modernism. Touching on such examples as film noir and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, Bahr shows how this community of exiles reconstituted modernism in the face of the traumatic political and historical changes they were living through.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Illustrations

Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1. The Dialectic of Modernism

Chapter 2. Art and Its Resistance to Society

Chapter 3. Bertolt Brecht's California Poetry

Chapter 4. The Dialectic of Modern Science

Chapter 5. Epic Theater versus Film Noir

Chapter 6. California Modern as Immigrant Modernism

Chapter 7. Between Modernism and Antimodernism

Chapter 8. Renegade Modernism

Chapter 9. The Political Battleground of Exile Modernism

Chapter 10. Evil Germany versus Good Germany

Chapter 11. A "True Modernist"

Conclusion: The Weimar Legacy of Los Angeles

Chronology

Appendices

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 323-346) and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9786612359262

9781282359260

1282359266

9780520933804

052093380X

OCLC:

609849871