Antifascist Humanism and the Politics of Cultural Renewal in Germany

This study traces German traditions of cultural renewal from their beginnings in antifascist activism to their failure in the emerging Cold War.

Andreas Agocs (Author)

9781107085435, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 July 2017

216 pages, 9 b/w illus.
23.5 x 16 x 1.6 cm, 0.45 kg

'… Andreas Agocs has written an empirically focused, analytically wide-ranging study of the Cultural League for the Democratic Renewal of Germany (Kulturbund), a self-consciously antifascist organization that surfaced amid the ruins of Nazism in 1945.' Sean A. Forner, The American Historical Review

Antifascism is usually described as either a political ideology of activists and intellectuals confronting the dictatorships of Hitler and Mussolini, or as a cynical tool that justified the Stalinist expansion of communism in Europe. Andreas Agocs widens our understanding of antifascism by placing it in the context of twentieth-century movements of 'cultural renewal'. He explores the concept of 'antifascist humanism', the attempt by communist and liberal intellectuals and artists to heal the divisions of Nazism by reviving the 'other Germany' of classical Weimar. This project took intellectual shape in German exile communities in Europe and Latin America during World War II and found its institutional embodiment in the Cultural League for Democratic Renewal in Soviet-occupied Berlin in 1945. During the emerging Cold War, antifascist humanism's uneasy blend of twentieth-century mass politics and cultural nationalism became the focal point of new divisions in occupied Germany and the early German Democratic Republic. This study traces German traditions of cultural renewal from their beginnings in antifascist activism to their failure in the emerging Cold War.

Introduction: antifascist humanism and the dual legacies of Weimar
Part I. Defending the 'Other Germany': 1. The humanist front: antifascism and culture wars, 1934–9
2. 'Otra Alemanias': antifascist humanism in the diasporam, 1939–44
3. The 'other Germany' from below: antifascist committees and national renewal in 1945
Part II. Contesting 'Other Germanies': 4. Antifascism as renewal and restoration: the cultural League for the democratic renewal of Germany, 1945–6
5. Humanism with a socialist face: Sovietization and 'ideological coordination' of the Kulturbund, 1946–7
6. The limits of humanism: cultural renewal and the outbreak of the Cold War, 1947–8
7. Mass organization and memory: antifascist humanism in divided Germany, 1948 and beyond
Conclusion: from the Saar to Salamis.

Subject Areas: Fascism & Nazism [JPFQ], Politics & government [JP], Cultural studies [JFC], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW]