The Age of Anxiety

(done over break 2010

Focus Questions for Notes

• 1. In what ways did new and disturbing ideas in philosophy, physics, psychology, and literature reflect the general crisis in Western thought?

• 2. How did modernism revolutionize architecture, painting, and music?

• 3. How did the emerging consumer society and mass culture of the interwar years change the everyday lives of ordinary men and women?

Focus Questions for Notes

• 4. How did the democratic leaders of the 1920s deal with deep-seated instability and try to establish real peace and prosperity?

• 5. What caused the Great Depression, and how did the Western democracies respond to the challenge?

Post World War I Culture

• Philosophy

• Pre 1914: Progress, reason, optimism, social rights increasing,

• 1880s: reject optimism, reject faith in progress– no audience until WWI– Valery: “Doubt and disorder are in us and with us.”– Intellectual Crisis of 20th century

Philosophy Cont.

• Nietzsche– ever since Athens there has been too much emphasis on

rationality• stifled passion and instinct

– reason, democracy, progress all suffocating society

– only hope is to accept meaningless existence

• Bergson-immediate experience important• Sorel-elite should control masses

Logical Empiricism

• rejects cornerstone of traditional philosophy

• philosophy is study of language

Existentialism

• atheists, true voice of Age of Anxiety

• Sartre-humans just exist

• Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspars– disillusioned students follow their ideals

• Albert Camus

Sigmund Freud

• previously one conscience

• human behavior is irrational

• inhibited sex key to mental health

New Physics

• Late 1800s Physics one sign of hope

• Science based on fact and study

• Unchanging natural laws determine the processes

• Curies-radium omits subatomic weight

• Plank-quanta

• brings into question distinction between matter and energy

Physics Cont.

• Einstein

• Rutherford

• Implications:– disturbing to masses– everything uncertain and unstable– Heisenberg “principle of uncertainty”

Revival of Christianity

• Christianity on the attack• Now stress human nature’s sin• Christ is moral teacher

– Schweitzer Quest for Historical Jesus– Kierkegaard-reject fundamental church– Barth-humans are imperfect creatures

• Catholics– Marcel and Maritain– provide hope and humanity

Literature

• writers focus on irrational mind

• “stream of consciousness”

• Woolf Jacob’s Room

• Faulkner

• James Joyce Ulysses

• anti-utopia, reject progress

• Spengler-Decline of the West

Literature

• TS Eliot

• Kafka

• Orwell

Architecture

• functionalism

• Louis H. Sullivan

• Frank Lloyd Wright

• 1911 Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus

Movies and Radio

• Culture of the elite, these for the masses

• 1890s France: peep shows and arcades

• US leads movie industry

• Pickford, Sennett, Keystone Kops

• Chaplin

• 1920s Germany “bizarre expressionists”

• 1930s “talkies” allow Europe to catch up

Radio

• Marconi 1901

• 1920 Major events broadcast

• GB sets up BBC

• 1930s 3/4 all households

• propaganda and ...

Music

Attracted to emotional intensity

Some turn their backs on typical music styles

Atonal

Stravinsky: Rite of Spring

Art

• Cubism-shapes

• Dadaism-attacked all accepted behaviors of conduct

• Surrealism-wild dreams and complex symbols

• Picasso, Ernst

Politics

• Versailles creates a shaky peace

• Germany hates Versailles

• France fearful and isolated

• GB undependable

• US turns its back

• trade disrupted, debts huge

GB and France don’t agree

• France wants harshness of treaty enforced

• GB wants trade back

• Economic Consequences of the Peace Keynes

• France looking for Allies– 1921 pact with Poland, associated with Little

Entente against Hungary– Middle East a source of tensions also

War Debts

• April 1921 price set at 132 billion gold marks• 2.5 billion per year or occupation• 1921 payment made but not 1922• January 1923 Poincare orders occupation of

Ruhr• Germans go on strike• France seals entire Rhineland

War Debts

• Money printed and social revolution takes place

• Middle-class Germans are the ones hurt (Harvard)

• August 1923 Gustav Stresemann takes over Germany

Hope in Foreign Affairs

• Dawes Plan 1924: US to Germany to GB/France; back to US

• Max payment $625 million, minimum $250 million

• 1925 “Spirit of Locarno”

• 1926 Germany joins League

• 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact

• 1929 Young Plan

Hope in Politics

• Germany– 1923 Communist and National Socialist Coups

Attempts thwarted– Moderate businessmen realize parliamentary

government can lead to prosperity– but still a split with nationalists, monarchists,

communists

Why Germany does not go the way of Russia

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht radical socialist arrested and shot before their revolution can occur.

German Socialist Democrats end the war

Social Democrats offering democracy and social liberties gradual elimination of capitalism

3 Counter-Revolutionary Methods

1) Hertling and von Baden care taker government, make some reforms

constitutional monarchy uses SPD party

2) Ebert-Groener Pact Ebert under siege, calls Groener replaced Ludendorff

in army, Asks for help, don’t break up army and I will help

Must use Friekorps

3) Stinnes-Legien Agreement The result: Weimar Republic

Hope in Politics

• France – communists vs socialists for workers– coalitions needed– inflation high

• GB– 12% unemployment in ‘20s– Labour Party comes to power led by Ramsey

MacDonald– 1922 Full autonomy for Catholic Ireland

The Great Depression

• always happen, but none worse then ‘29-’33

• Stock Market Crash

• Effect on Europe– real investment (farms) vs. speculation– margin– lose confidence, wealth– recall loans– 1931 Largest Bank in Austria closes

World Production drops

• down 38%

• GB goes off gold standard, create higher tariffs

• Rapid slide a result of…– lack of leadership– poor economic policy

Mass Unemployment

• GB bad, but US worse

• lose spirit, dignity, postpone marriages

Scandinavian Response

• Social Democrats the largest party

• History of cooperation

• Deficit spending

• Social welfare

• Coops, and democracy thrive

Recovery and Reform in GB and France

• GB 1932 Conservative led coalition– National not international

• France– political turmoil– Fascists, Communists, Socialists then– Popular Front and Leon Blum May 1936– Gone by June 1937