Chair: Merse Pál Szeredi
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Eszter Balázs
The fall (and eventual reconstruction) of Paris as a main cultural centre in Hungarian periodicals during First World War and its aftermath
Paris had been a cultural super-capital since the 1890 in the eyes of the majority of Hungarian cultural elite (on the model of entire Central Europe), regardless of their different views about modernism. Not only elite culture but also popular culture from Paris was transmitted widely and regularly by literary, artistic, and other – more encyclopaedic – cultural periodicals. These periodicals had been very effective means of expression of a genuine cultural Francophilia in the context of a growing political Germanophilia (and a retreating political Francophilia) since the turn of the 19–20th century in the Hungarian part of the Monarchy. However, by the explosion of the Great War in 1914, when France became an enemy of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the cultural attractiveness of Paris was immediately questioned even in Budapest. Initially, a reconsideration of the cultural map of Europe took place in a directly political frame by Hungarian cultural periodicals and press in general. Hence, the French capital suddenly became a periphery in the eyes of many Hungarian writers and other intellectuals who tried to see Weimar or Berlin as a new European centre or rather saw the opportunity to come for Budapest to appear in the role as such a centre (at least in the region). However, some writers and artists and other intellectuals, nonetheless, dared to pronounce their sadness over the “fall” of Paris – for a while frightened also physically by German troops – as a European cultural super-capital. In my paper, I’ll try to present this rather complex discourse, via periodicals, about this sudden degradation as a cultural centre of the French capital related to Hungarian imagination. Literary, artistic, and more encyclopaedic cultural periodical literature (as well as some daily press) will be taken into consideration. Also, I’ll put in focus the evolution of this discourse by presenting attempts, mainly after 1916, to reconstruct the former place of Paris as a /one of the cultural capital(s) of the future Europe – and all that beyond the military end of the First World war (until 1919–1920).
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Agnieszka Rejniak-Majewska
Between the Latin world and the East: L’Esprit nouveau and its eastern readers
L’Esprit Nouveau edited in 1920-1925 by Jeanneret and Ozenfant did not count among the “little magazines” of the time but formed a serious, long-lasting business endeavor and ambitious critical enterprise, even though its editors remained its main contributors. The journal’s long list of subscribers included many names from Central-East Europe – architects, artists, and poets that in the 1920s established avant-garde circles in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Berlin. Consequently, magazines they published, like Vesch-Objet-Gegenstand literally (but secretly) followed parts of L’Esprit Nouveau’s programmatic slogans, while others like Život, Ma, Zwrotnica, Blok reproduced chosen images, texts, and took example form its (tactical and/or ideological) alliances with industrial companies. Jeanneret’s journal searches for hegemony and its intent allegiance to the “Latin” tradition made it ignorant of Czechoslovak or Polish avant-garde initiatives, although it showed some respect for the work of the Russian avant-garde. In my paper I would like to bring out some particularities of the exchanges between L’Esprit Nouveau and its eastern readers and followers, to analyze the shifting meanings of their shared ideas and iconography. Even if the influence remained mostly unidirectional (from Paris to the East), the borrowings and inspirations taken from L’Esprit Nouveau were the effects of selective and critical readings, which testified to the distinctness of Central-European avant-garde magazines’ interests and profiles. Their alliance with Jeanneret served them as a form of empowerment, but the use of his authority did not necessarily imply being faithful to his journal’s whole message.
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Magdolna Gucsa
Die Zone: Double resistance of a German community in Paris
My paper aims to understand the cultural and political motivations of the anti-Nazi Die Zone, a German-language journal in 1930s Paris, and assess the extent to which it could make an impact – on the public it could possibly reach or create for itself; on the views on the increasingly marginalized German-speaking (artistic) communities living in the French capital; and on dominant French political narratives that blurred the line between the Third Reich and the German culture after Hitler’s rise to power. A total of seven issues of Die Zone were published in 1933–1934 with the principal aim to promote Franco-German cooperation, in the last moment when the left-wing authors could aspire to build a community of German-speaking artists who already found themselves on the periphery of French public life. My investigation on Die Zone is structured around three main questions. While exploring the effectiveness of the journal as a platform for a community to engage in political action against both National Socialism and its own marginalization in the French society, I equally examine whether the chief editor Emil Szittya could mobilize and channel the extensive network he had built in the context of the international avant-garde. Finally, I tackle the perception of Die Zone and those who made it by the French (general of professional) public, notably whether the bias or pre-determined social categories (Jewish, communist, German, Austrian etc.) coincided with historical facts and/or the identities created by the authors themselves.
Parallel Session 4.
East of Paris