Peter Gay: Weimar Culture: The Outsider As Insider (1968–) [EN, CR]

First published in 1968, Weimar Culture is one of the masterworks of Peter Gay’s career. A study of German culture between the two wars, the book brilliantly traces the rise of the artistic, literary, and musical culture that bloomed ever so briefly in the 1920s amid the chaos of Germany’s tenuous post-World War I democracy, and crashed violently in the wake of Hitler’s rise to power. Despite the ephemeral nature of the Weimar democracy, the influence of its culture was profound and far-reaching, ushering in a modern sensibility in the arts that dominated Western culture for most of the twentieth century.

First published by Harper & Row, New York, 1968.
Publisher W. W. Norton, 2001
ISBN 0393322394, 9780393322392
205 pages
via chef

Review (Walter Laquer, The New York Times Books, 1968)
Review (Elizabeth Wiskemann, The Spectator, 1969)
Review (Sterling Fishman, History of Education Quarterly, 1970)

Publisher

Weimar Culture: The Outsider As Insider (English, 1968/2001, EPUB)
Weimarksa kultura: Isključenik kao uključenik (Croatian, trans. Danja Šilović-Karić, 1999, added on 2014-8-3)

Julia Vaingurt: Wonderlands of the Avant-Garde: Technology and the Arts in Russia of the 1920s (2013)

“In postrevolutionary Russia, as the Soviet government was initiating a program of rapid industrialization, avant-garde artists declared their intent to serve the nascent state and to transform life in accordance with their aesthetic designs. In spite of their professed utilitarianism, however, most avant-gardists created works that can hardly be regarded as practical instruments of societal transformation. Exploring this paradox, Vaingurt claims that the artists’ investment of technology with aesthetics prevented their creations from being fully conscripted into the arsenal of political hegemony. The purposes of avant-garde technologies, she contends, are contemplative rather than constructive. Looking at Meyerhold’s theater, Tatlin’s and Khlebnikov’s architectural designs, Mayakovsky’s writings, and other works from the period, Vaingurt offers an innovative reading of an exceptionally complex moment in the formation of Soviet culture.”

Publisher Northwestern University Press, 2013
SRLT series
ISBN 0810128942, 9780810128941
322 pages
via Sorin

Review: Boris Dralyuk (NEP, 2013), Tim Harte (Slavic Review, 2014).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2022-11-12)

See also the science-fiction film Aelita, Queen of Mars, dir. Yakov Protazanov, 1924, 111 min, based on Tolstoy’s novel.

E. P. Thompson: William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary, rev. ed. (1955/1977)

This biographical study is a window into 19th-century British society and the life of William Morris—the great craftsman, architect, designer, poet, and writer—who remains an influential figure to this day. This account chronicles how his concern with artistic and human values led him to cross what he called the “river of fire” and become a committed socialist—committed not only to the theory of socialism but also to the practice of it in the day-to-day struggle of working women and men in Victorian England. While both the British Labor Movement and the Marxists have venerated Morris, this legacy of his life proves that many of his ideas did not accord with the dominant reforming tendencies, providing a unique perspective on Morris scholarship.

First published by The Merlin Press, London, 1955
Publisher Pantheon Books, New York, 1977
ISBN 0394733207
829 pages

Review (Eli Zaretsky, Studies in Romanticism, 1977)
Review (Patrick Parrinder, Science Fiction Studies, 1980)
Thompson’s lecture on Morris to the Williams Morris Society (1959)

Publisher (new edition, 2011)

PDF (109 MB, no OCR)
See also Morris’ novel News from Nowhere (1890/93) in the Internet Archive.