Germany 1920s

in: Medizinhistorisches Journal 52 (2017), S. 270-307.


Modern constitutional medicine was established during World War I, an interdisciplinary program of basic research investigating individual factors in disease etiology – the "constitution" of the single patient. During the 1920s its ambitious goal to combine scientific methodology with individualized medical practise had to stand the test. Constitutional authors met this challenge by broadening both object and scope of their research. Cause and formation of the individual constitution became the predominant research matter of the 1920s. Near the end of the decade, interest in prophylaxis and therapy increased.

German
Die moderne Konstitutionslehre etablierte sich während des Ersten Weltkrieges als interdisziplinäres Forschungsprogramm, das nach individuellen Faktoren der Krankheitsentstehung fragte – der dem einzelnen Patienten eigenen Konstitution. Die 1920er Jahre können als ihre Bewährungszeit gelten, sollte sich doch in dieser Zeit entscheiden, ob die hochgesteckten Ziele umsetzbar sein würden: Naturwissenschaftliche Grundlagenforschung plus eine individualisierende klinische Praxis. Konstitutionsforscher reagierten auf diese Herausforderung, indem sie Forschungsgegenstand und -fragen ausweiteten. Zum bestimmenden Thema der 1920er sollte die Untersuchung der Konstitutionsgenese werden. Prophylaxe und Therapie der Konstitution wurden gegen Ende des Jahrzehnts wichtiger.

Gustav Stresemann, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and German Foreign Minister of the 1920s, is well-known for the international cooperation of the Weimar Republic with Europe’s great powers. He simultaneously pursued a peaceful modification of the eastern boundaries of Germany, while accepting the reality of the Versailles system. This paper analyses the change in Germanys relations with her eastern neighbours, as well as Stresemann’s intentions to achieve border revisions and to support German minorities abroad. It is especially exciting to consider the purposes of the German approach to the Soviet Union in Stresemann’s program, and if this could have been used to force concessions from the West. The study also sheds light on why Stresemann overestimated the revisionist potential of the ocarno Treaties, and on the remaining possibilities of border revisions that existed at the end of his six-year tenure as Foreign Minister.

Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) lived in Berlin at Motzstrasse for two of the most important decades of his life (1903-1923). For the first of those decades, Berlin was home, and for the second decade it was his home-away-from-home (after the move to Dornach, Switzerland in 1913). Moving to Berlin changed the fortunes of Rudolf Steiner. He was embraced by the Theosophists and this gave him a platform to hone his skills as an orator, and the opportunity to discover his life mission. “In 1902, Marie von Sivers and I entered upon the leadership of the German section of the Theosophical Society”. Rudolf Steiner and Marie von Sivers occupied the Gartenhaus apartment of Level 3 on the left, the library and Society occupied Level 4 (top floor), Clara and Kurt Walther occupied Level 2, and the publishing company (Verlag) occupied Level 1. The ground level was occupied by an unrelated tenant. Rudolf Steiner moved to Dornach, Switzerland in 1913 to establish the headquarters of his Anthroposophy movement. It was a residential upgrade, as the Steiners moved into an imposing free-standing home, Haus Hansi, set high on the street with a pleasant outlook, and its own atrium and front and rear gardens. Steiner continued his close association with Berlin after the move to Switzerland. From a lifetime tally of 6783 lectures, 1751 (26%) were delivered in Berlin. During WW1, when he might have been expected to avoid Berlin (and Germany generally), Steiner spent long swathes of time in Berlin, despite the privations of wartime, food rationing, and the blockade of imports by the Allies  Rudolf Steiner’s visits to Berlin rapidly tapered off after the Armistice (of 11 November 1918). His final Berlin lecture was on the 22nd May 1923. Steiner’s neighbourhood was severely damaged by WW2 bombing. The southern side of his street, Motzstrasse (= Motzstraße = Motz Street), now comprises nondescript post-WW2 residential apartment buildings. Steiner’s apartment block, which was then number 17, and is now number 30, has survived. Motzstrasse is 3 kilometres  from the twenty-first century ‘Berlin destinations’ of Potsdamer Platz, Checkpoint Charlie, the Topographie des Terrors (Topography of Terror), and the longest extant remnant of the Berlin Wall.

Despite the fact that in the history of Croatian architecture of the interwar period Expressionism neither took firm hold nor had the significance and reception like it had in Germany, there exists a whole series of architectural designs which display a pronounced influence of this style. In Croatian architecture Expressionism appeared roughly from around 1922 until the end of the 1920s and in the work of some architects even later, in the course of the 1930s. It occurred mainly under the influence of German and partly Austrian architecture and as a reflection of the incursion of Modernism, not as a result of the chaotic post-war climate, inflation or other economic changes. Architects of Croatian Expressionism did not form a homogenous group – they neither shared the same formation or social convictions, nor belonged to the same political circles. What they had in common were aspirations for the accommodation of architecture to the new world, its new needs and technical possibilities. Two German architects had a profound influence on the emergence of Expressionism in Croatian architecture – Hans Poelzig and Peter Behrens. Hans Poelzig trained three Croatian architects who in the course of the 1920s produced designs influenced by Expressionism: Drago Ibler, Zdenko Strižić and Josip Pičman. Especially important is the oeuvre of Drago Ibler, who created a whole series of Expressionist projects, most of which remained unbuilt. Particularly significant are his designs for the Epidemiology Institute (1922), for the Central Workers’ Insurance Office (1923) and for the Trading High School (1928) in Zagreb. His most important executed work of the 1920s was the interior of the theatre section of the pavilion of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes at the 1925 Exposition internationale des Arts décoratifs et industriels modernes in Paris. Between 1926 and 1943 Ibler was the head of the Department of Architecture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Some of the architects trained at the Department, like Stjepan Planić, embraced Expressionist aesthetics. Peter Behrens’s influence on the emergence of Expressionism in Croatian architecture occurred through the work of his disciples educated at the Viennese Akademie der bildenden Künste (his most important Croatian disciple was Juraj (Georg) Neidhardt), as well as through his participation in the construction of the Zagreb City slaughterhouse complex. Behrens was the representative of architect Walter Frese from Berlin, who in 1928 produced the design for the city’s slaughterhouse, constructed between 1929 and 1931. Stylistic features of the buildings of this complex display a combination of elements of Expressionist and Neue Sachlichkeit architecture. Besides Behrens’s and Poelzig’s disciples, a number of Zagreb architects of the older generation also designed under the influence of Expressionist aesthetics. Among the most important is Ignjat Fischer, designer of the interior of the City Café at the Ban Jelačić Square in the very centre of Zagreb. It was executed in the years 1929-31 and represents the most important example of Expressionist architecture in Croatia. The City Café was designed under the influence of Poelzig’s works, more precisely of his most important building, the Grosses Schauspielhaus in Berlin. Almost at the same time, in 1928-30, the same square was embellished by the hotel and department store building owned by Svetozar Milinov and designed by Dioniz Sunko, which originally included an advertising tower with elements of Backsteinexpressionismus. A number of designs related to Expressionist architecture can be associated with the so-called Foundation block planned in the centre of Zagreb in late 1920s and early 1930s (among which stand out designs by Stjepan Planić, and Josip Pičman and Josip Seissel). From that time on, the International Style started to become fully dominant in Croatian architecture.

The early twentieth century marks a significant change in ontological enquiry with Martin Heidegger being the dominant protagonist. Interestingly, Heidegger not only branched away from the canonical tradition of Western metaphysics that had been in place since Plato,  yet his political “turn” in 1933, seems somewhat contradictory to his central doctrine of absolute-resoluteness. Within this investigation I will approach this shift in ontological enquiry with a conceptual historical approach. I will highlight the inseparability of the Ontic (human) and the Ontological (Dasein), as both of which are inherent and reliant upon one another. It is thus that I hold the premise that all enquiry is in relation to its utterance. The enquiry is influenced and determined by the enquirer, philosophy does not occur within a vacuum. The socio-political environment is a high determinant of metaphysics. To quote Karl Marx, ‘men make their own history, but they do not do so freely, not under conditions of their own choosing, but rather under circumstances which directly confront them, and which are historically given and transmitted.’  It is this notion that is distinctly in relation to metaphysics as I stand by men make their own ontological conceptions in much the same way as Marx determines history. The aim therefore for this paper is to demonstrate the socio-political influence upon Heideggerian philosophy and those influenced by his practice. I will demonstrate that early twentieth century Germany experienced a period of acceleration which fractured the temporal succession of Self-World conceptions.