The 1930s today

Coordinator: Laura Luise Schultz

The research group The 1930s today investigates the role of art and culture in authoritarian movements in the 1930s and today, including its role as an instrument for populist movements and demagogical politics as well as its function as a critical corrective to and mobilising force against authoritarian systems and ideologies. The mutually interconnected key perspectives that the group focuses on are:

• the reception of the 1930s in contemporary art and culture
• attacks on the cultural infrastructure by authoritarian and populist parties and movements in the 1930s and today
• the study of art and culture as well as the cultural and political climate of the 1930s that constitute the basis of the abovementioned comparisons with the present

In addition to this comes a fundamental, critical discussion of the historiographic basis of such analogies and comparisons.