The end of the First World War and the onset of the interwar period in Britain (1918-1938) and Weimar Germany (1919-1933) brought upon an increase in European exposure to the American way of life. The stationing of American forces in Western Europe, Britain, France and Belgium, caused an influence of American culture that they had brought with them. Their presence was also felt in Germany, as the central powers defeat in the war influenced the then American President Woodrow Wilson’s 14-point program and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles by the League of Nations. The compliance to these two peace treaties imposed a dramatic decrease in the polarization of the population that was present during the Weimar republic and marked the end
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The susceptibility of these European countries to Americanization was substantiated by an amalgam of marketing and adoption of elements of American culture, such as film, radio, gramophone records, jazz, advertising, magazines, processed food, etc. as well as an increase of travel to the United States. However, the cultural authorities and intellectuals saw these effects intimidating and dismal, almost like the measure of correlation of de-Europeanization. Essays written by intellectuals such as Denys Thompson and John B. Priestley from Britain and Stefan Zweig, Rudolf Kayser, Friedrich Sieburg and Ernst Lorsy, who wrote during Weimar Germany, show their personal views on Americanisation and also how the people of the time either embraced or rejected it. I will argue that although Americanisation in Germany and Britain had the same meaning and connotation around it, most intellectuals and artists responded differently to the mass culture and social change in these …show more content…
Hollywood film, radio, fashion, dance, music, specifically jazz, dominated homegrown counterparts becoming prevalent features of daily life for the Europeans. In an essay published by Stefan Zweig in 1925, The Monotonisation of the World, he scrutinizes the inevitability and irresistibility of American culture during Weimar Germany. Zweig shows that the media is be knowingly acculturating, causing mass media, as he states ‘everything is becoming more uniform in its outward manifestations’. By taking the examples of dance, which was ‘specific to nations’, fashion which ‘took years for a fashion from Paris to reach other big cities’, cinema and radio he stresses that this mass culture created sameness and simultaneity. Germans began to have conformity of taste and alignment of judgments by listening to ‘intoxicating’ international radio, witnessing American cinematic in films which caused ‘ccomplete cancellation of any individuality’, wearing American clothing and dancing ‘the same dance to the same short-winded, impersonal melodies’. Zweig shows no hesitation in pointing the finger towards America as he states ‘What is the source of this terrible wave threatening to wash all the color, everything particular out of life?… America’, blaming them for the ‘dehistoricisation’ of Germany. On the contrary, although American popular
The susceptibility of these European countries to Americanization was substantiated by an amalgam of marketing and adoption of elements of American culture, such as film, radio, gramophone records, jazz, advertising, magazines, processed food, etc. as well as an increase of travel to the United States. However, the cultural authorities and intellectuals saw these effects intimidating and dismal, almost like the measure of correlation of de-Europeanization. Essays written by intellectuals such as Denys Thompson and John B. Priestley from Britain and Stefan Zweig, Rudolf Kayser, Friedrich Sieburg and Ernst Lorsy, who wrote during Weimar Germany, show their personal views on Americanisation and also how the people of the time either embraced or rejected it. I will argue that although Americanisation in Germany and Britain had the same meaning and connotation around it, most intellectuals and artists responded differently to the mass culture and social change in these …show more content…
Hollywood film, radio, fashion, dance, music, specifically jazz, dominated homegrown counterparts becoming prevalent features of daily life for the Europeans. In an essay published by Stefan Zweig in 1925, The Monotonisation of the World, he scrutinizes the inevitability and irresistibility of American culture during Weimar Germany. Zweig shows that the media is be knowingly acculturating, causing mass media, as he states ‘everything is becoming more uniform in its outward manifestations’. By taking the examples of dance, which was ‘specific to nations’, fashion which ‘took years for a fashion from Paris to reach other big cities’, cinema and radio he stresses that this mass culture created sameness and simultaneity. Germans began to have conformity of taste and alignment of judgments by listening to ‘intoxicating’ international radio, witnessing American cinematic in films which caused ‘ccomplete cancellation of any individuality’, wearing American clothing and dancing ‘the same dance to the same short-winded, impersonal melodies’. Zweig shows no hesitation in pointing the finger towards America as he states ‘What is the source of this terrible wave threatening to wash all the color, everything particular out of life?… America’, blaming them for the ‘dehistoricisation’ of Germany. On the contrary, although American popular