9.4: Cultural and Intellectual Trends

Mass Culture: Radio and Movies – Mass communication was important for growth. – Radio was especially important (Marconi) – Movies or motion pictures emerged as a tool of communication prior to WWI. – Radio offered great opportunities to reach great masses over long distances Hitler’s speeches Roosevelt’s “Fire Side Chats” King George III Christmas morning address

– Film had lots of propaganda elements, not just entertainments value. – Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, believed film could influence the masses. – In The Triumph of the Will, conveyed the ideas of National Socialism in the Nuremberg rally of 1934.

Mass Leisure After WWI people had more time and leisure activities begin to pop up everywhere, Professional sporting events, travel, trip to the beach all were created for the enjoyment of people after their time at work. The Nazis adopted a program called Kraft durch Freude that offered a variety of leisure activities to fill the free time of the working class (concerts, films, guided tours, etc)

Artistic and Literary Trends Art: Nightmares and New Visions – Abstract Art – fascination with the absurd and the unconscious content of the mind Dada movement – idea that life had no purpose Photomontage – a picture made out of a combination of photographs Surrealism – sought a reality beyond the material world and found it in the unconscious. – Portrayed fantasies, dreams and even nightmares – Salvador Dali – painted everyday object but separated them from their normal context

– Under the Weimar Republic, Germany was the center of the art world. – Hitler and the Nazis rejected modern art as “degenerate.” – They wanted to create a new genuine art form that glorified the strong, healthy, and heroic qualities of the Aryan people. Architecture: The Modernist Spirit – Wanted to create a new style that was embedded with faith in technology

Literature: The Search for the Unconscious – “Stream of consciousness” a technique used by writers to report the innermost thoughts of each character. – James Joyce’s Ulysses, tells the story of ordinary people in Dublin by following the flow of their inner thoughts. – Hermann Hesse’s novels reflected the influence of both Freud’s psychology and Asian religions. Spiritual loneliness of modern humans in a mechanized urban society

The Heroic Age of Physics Classical physics of Newton vs. uncertainty principle. – Classic idea that physics could be predicted was shaken when Heisenberg stated that atoms were made of subatomic particles that’s behavior was unpredictable. – Heisenberg’s suggested that all physical laws were based on uncertainty.