IBWN - Caught Between Wars: Life in the Interwar Years. (Lesson)

Caught Between Wars: Life in the Interwar Years.

Information below is adapted from the Giant EHAP Review Guide at HistoryTeacher.net

 

Influences on Twentieth Century Culture.

In the twentieth century, small movements in new directions from prior decades became dominant in many fields. Psychology, literature and art probed the irrational and surreal.

Sigmund Freud's discoveries had huge influence and implications. Freud stated that the mind was divided into the unconscious, the subconscious, and the conscious, and that people were driven by the id (instinctual urges residing in the unconscious), which is controlled by the ego, which is told to do so by the superego (conscience imposed by society). He also found that all memories were kept, in some form, and that repression of memories from the conscious mind led to neuroses. Freud invented psychoanalysis to cure patients of their neuroses. From Freud's discoveries, many inferred that greater candor in society would lead to a happier population. Carl G. Jung broke from Freud and developed a theory of the collective unconscious (a common bond between whole peoples expressed in rituals.)

 

Movements in Literature.

Surrealism - the surrealists applied Freudian ideas directly and believed art had to penetrate the subconscious. Both an artistic and literary movement, surrealism explored inner thoughts and dreams.

Other writers, though not necessarily surrealists, explored human irrationality. For example:

  • Marcel Proust - wrote Remembrance of Things Past and focused on interior monologue and the expression of the narrator's feelings
  • Franz Kafka - wrote descriptions of twisted fantasies, Metamorphosis
  • James Joyce - wrote Ulysses, which told a day in the life of the average Dubliner on epic proportions
  • Virginia Woolf - was a political activist and feminist, A Room of One's Own

Duchamp painting LHOOQ.In general, novelists turned away from the clear, chronological narratives of the past and focused more on controversial issues and the exploration of dreams and fantasies.

 

Movements in Art.

In all the arts, the new craze was to shock the audience by presenting absurd things, etc. The Dadaists were excellent at this, and used their bizarre routines to infuriate the proper Paris bourgeoisie. The Futurists in Italy were obsessed with speed, and the Fauvres in France and the Expressionists in Germany aimed to wildly break conventions.

In painting, the Cubists and Expressionists confused people with their strange designs, often incorporating violence and amorality. This scared most people.

Consider this: Dada artists attempted to do the unexpected, to shock their audience. This print (on the right) from Marcel Duchamp does just that. He takes the classic Mona Lisa and simply adds a mustache and goatee. IMAGE - LHOOQ by Marcel Duchamp, Public Domain.

 

Movements in Philosophy.

The major philosophical work of this time was by Oswald Spengler and was called the Decline of the West. He treated civilizations as living organisms and stated that WWI was the beginning of the end for Western Civilization. Jose Ortega y Gasset was just as pessimistic in The Revolt of the Masses, for he stated that the masses would use their rising power to destroy civilization's achievements.

In Principia Mathematica, Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead stated that philosophers should only worry about things that were precise and empirically demonstrable. Ludwig Wittgenstein agreed in his related system of local positivism, and, in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, he tried to limit though by insisting on symbolic logic. These new analytic philosophers emulated science, and tried to get rid of any statements that did not have a precise meaning. Philosophy became more specialized.

 

Advances in Science.

By this time, science had become incomprehensible to the average person. It became increasingly specialized, and even though people generally knew the implications of the theories, they did not really understand them. Many laws were overturned during this time as well.

Albert Michelson and Edward Morley, in 1887, started one line of new thinking by challenging the theory that the universe was filled with a substance called ether. Albert Einstein followed up on this (and then some) in his Theory of Relativity, which stated that space and time were not absolute.

Physicists were also finding a new understanding of matter. In 1895, Willhelm Roentgen discovered x-rays, and two years later J.J. Thomson proved that the electron existed. Researchers like Pierre and Marie Curie explored radioactivity and further proved the divisibility of the atom. Ernest Rutherford followed up on this by associating radioactivity with the breakdown of large atoms.

This led to quantum physics, or the attempt to explain why Newton's laws didn't work for subatomic particles. Max Planck challenged Newton in 1902 by showing energy was emitted in quanta and had many properties of matter, and in 1919, Rutherford changed an atom by bombarding it with subatomic particles. But they could find no unified theory to explain the subatomic world. Werner Heisenberg then came up with the Uncertainty Principle, which stated they really couldn't know anything for sure. By this time Newtonian physics (in some cases) and the old conception of the atom had been thrown out the window. Science became ultra-complicated, and now there were no more popularizers like Voltaire to make it understandable to everyday people.

In biology, advances were made in the study of heredity and in the isolation of viruses (which led to new drugs like penicillin). In sociology, Emile Durkheim (who used statistics to analyze customs) and Max Weber (the "ideal type") were concerned with the customs that held society together and were concerned about what happened when group norms broke down.

 

Popular Culture.

There were many new technologies (such as cars, radios, planes, etc.) and lots of excitement in the 1920s. New and daring styles of architecture became popular, as did advertising.

Movies took full advantage of the trend towards distortions in time and perspective. They also became exceedingly popular as well as very profitable. All sorts of people, from the rich to the poor, attended the movies, although movies became more specialized to each country with the introduction of sound in 1929. Spectator sports became all the rage, with competitions drawing large crowds to see who could create and beat new records.

 

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