Antifascist Humanism and the Politics of Cultural Renewal in Germany

Andreas Agocs is currently visiting Assistant Professor at the University of the Pacific, California, where he teaches modern German and European History. His research area is the cultural and political history of Germany and Central Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

• Introduction: antifascist humanism and the dual legacies of Weimar; Part I. Defending the 'Other Germany': 1. The humanist front: antifascism and culture wars, 1934–9; 2. 'Otra Alemanias': antifascist humanism in the diasporam, 1939–44; 3. The 'other Germany' from below: antifascist committees and national renewal in 1945; Part II. Contesting 'Other Germanies': 4. Antifascism as renewal and restoration: the cultural League for the democratic renewal of Germany, 1945–6; 5. Humanism with a socialist face: Sovietization and 'ideological coordination' of the Kulturbund, 1946–7; 6. The limits of humanism: cultural renewal and the outbreak of the Cold War, 1947–8; 7. Mass organization and memory: antifascist humanism in divided Germany, 1948 and beyond; Conclusion: from the Saar to Salamis.

'Agocs has written a timely overview of the original 'antifa' cultural movements of the 1930s and 1940s in Europe and the Americas. Alarmed by the rise of Nazism and Italian Fascism, groups and intellectuals ranging from communists to liberals organized as exiles to counter the threat of fascism by promoting 'cultural humanism', based on ideas of the freedom of thought and religion and progressive Enlightenment views. Writers, artists, and intellectuals ranging from Thomas Mann to German communists who had fled to Mexico City published broadsides; organized under the sponsorship of the German Communist Party, the Free Germany movement, and through a variety of activities; and hoped to convey another, better Germany than the country that existed under the Third Reich. … Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.' M. Deshmukh, Choice