Return to Table of Contents
About the Database
German
literary
Expressionism Online
gathers all the important Expressionist literary journals, anthologies,
yearbooks and collections together in one extensive research database for the
first time.
The
aim of this project is to provide online access to the journal’s literary,
artistic, cultural-political, aesthetic, propagandist and feuilleton
contributions as digital facsimiles, thus preserving them in context of their
original text and design. However, for the benefit of the user, the text
material has also been indexed to the very highest technical level. Compiling
this material in a digital publication opens up the possibility for researchers
to take completely new approaches to individual authors, aspects or genres. Both
obtaining texts and gaining systematic access to them is made considerably
easier.
The
significance of the sources for different topics
As a literary and cultural movement, Expressionism was very influential for 20th
century literature. Of the young authors who made their first literary
appearances with poems, stories and programmatic writings in those days, many
are numbered among the most important literary figures of the 20th century, e.g.
Hugo Ball, Johannes R. Becher, Gottfried Benn, Klabund, Georg Heym, Else
Lasker-Schüler, Georg Trakl, Frank Wedekind or Franz Werfel.
Within
the Expressionist movement journals and anthologies formed the most important
forum for ideas, writing and for public debate. Each author belonging to the
Expressionist movement wrote for one journal or another, some publishing their
work exclusively in periodicals and collections. The journals and collections
are extremely important sources for German literature of the early 20th
century because of their great significance at that time for the process of
presenting new literature and its ideas on the theory of art, and contemporary
cultural and sociopolitical topics. This self-contained group of sources
reflects the literary movement of Expressionism in its entirety.
The
material is particularly interesting for source work because, on the one hand,
the first publications of many the contributions can be studied here, and on the
other, these publications were in periodicals – a medium with rapid, regular
publications. Thus, each work can be considered and understood in context of
contemporary history, as a direct reaction to historical and political events.
The
anthologies and journals in the database are not only significant from a purely
literary point of view. Philosophers, theologians, politicians, historians, art
historians, psychologists, and many authors who were not central to the
expressionist movement also wrote for the new journals; such as Søren
Kierkegaard, Martin Buber, Theodor Herzl, Theodor Heuss and Gustav Landauer. Lithographies,
drawings, linocuts and
even examples of sheet music were printed in these publications, in some cases
for the first time. The theatre and the early days of film were also decisively
influenced by Expressionist styles. The new mass media was the subject of
numerous essays. Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari) by Robert Wiene, Metropolis (by Fritz Lang), Der Golem, wie
er in die Welt kam (The Golem: How He Came into the World) by Paul Wegener
or Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu,
a Symphony of Horror) by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, are all famous
examples of expressionist films. The sources collected in this database also
offer a wealth of material for the study of history of art, the theatre and
film.
Texts
by foreign authors were often published in the journals, providing detailed
coverage of new tendencies in European literature and reviewing works by foreign
authors. Paul Claudel, Dostojewski, Maxim Gorki, Knut Hamsun, Ibsen, Edgar Allen
Poe, Puschkin, Romain Rolland, Strindberg, Shaw, Tolstoi and Oscar Wilde are but
a few of the authors who are represented either with their own contributions or
with discussions of their works. Thus the journals are important sources on
cultural transfer at the beginning of the 20th century.
Despite
their use of a new aesthetic language, the expressionists were intensively
concerned with the German Classical and Romantic movements, printing and
discussing texts by the major classical writers. Thus, the database also
provides original source material for studies on the reception of the German
Classical and Romantic movements at the beginning of the 20th century
and research on Expressionism’s literary role models.
Not
least, the texts found in this database also represent a unique body of
contemporary historical sources. Expressionism explicitly regarded itself as a
political movement and was a focal point for the convergence of liberal and
radical tendencies between the end of the Wilhelminian Era and the Weimar
Republic. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht
were read, Erich Mühsam, Gustav Landauer, Kurt Eisner, Ernst Toller and many
others wrote programmatic texts on revolution, the Räterepublik (German Soviet
Republic) and the socialist utopia. The works contain interesting material on
the relationship of intellectuals and artists to socialism and anarchism, and
thus also constitute a source on the history of socialist ideology. In very
different ways the authors give their opinions on contemporary events: on World
War I, the November Revolution, the ‘Räterepublik’ and the beginnings of
the Weimar Republic. World War I in particular was the topic of poems
(expressionist war poems), reports, essays and manifestos.
On
the Collection of Material
Two essential German studies standard works formed the starting point for the
compilation of the content: In the 1960s Paul Raabe compiled a bibliographic
canon of expressionist collective publications which he outlined in the
repertory Die Zeitschriften und Sammlungen des literarischen Expressionismus
(The journals and collections of literary expressionism) (1). Later came the 18-volume Index
Expressionismus
(Index expressionism) (2), a content-analytical reappraisal of the canon of
journals. For this database, the editor has critically revised the canon of
works, enlarged it with 36 additional works and re-indexed the contributions it
contains. In all the database now covers 105 journals, 11 collected works, 12
year books and 23 anthologies, in more than 2,500 editions. About 78,900 pages
were digitized for the database, where they can be searched in full text and
using different extensive indexes.
No
library currently offers access to a collection of material as complete and
indexed in as much detail as the one compiled here: many of the editions
included are present in only a few libraries and are no longer available for use
due to their fragile condition.
The
masters used for digitization came from various libraries and partly from
private collections. They were carefully examined and their details compared
with the existing bibliographical information. In the process, numerous
bibliographical corrections and amendments were undertaken, such as pages in the
sample copies that were either unnumbered, falsely numbered or even completely
missing.
In
addition, the user is provided with 440 bio-bibliographical articles on the
editors of and most important contributors to the publications. These articles
originate from the volume Die Autoren und
Bücher des literarischen Expressionismus (The authors and books of literary
expressionism) (3) and from the Deutsches
Literatur-Lexikon (Lexicon of German literature) (4). In some cases new
articles were written. In addition, this group of people have all been given
identification numbers derived from the Name Authority File (PND) of the German
National Library, serving as linking and identification devices.
For
all publications contained in the database, descriptions of the titles can be
called up, complete with details of their publication histories, editors and
publishers as well as a list of the contributions.
Search
Access
The user can access the texts in several ways:
a
Basic Search for fast, comprehensive searches
an
Advanced Search with a variety of freely combinable search criteria
an
alphabetical list of all journals, yearbooks and anthologies, with
publication descriptions linked directly to the digitized editions and their
electronic table of content
an
alphabetical list of all persons, linked to an overview of each person’s
contributions, translations or editorial work.
A number of search criteria are available, enabling the user to search accurately for contributions in the publications. Besides bibliographical details, systematic search criteria such as subjects and generic terms can be used. Full text searches through the entire text material or in combination with other search criteria provide access on yet another level. For example, the use of terms and sayings can be studied in context using the full text search.
In
order to provide the reader with texts preserved in the context of their
original contents and designs, pages are displayed on screen as digital
facsimiles. This is especially important, because the avant-garde artistic
design of many journals was an essential aspect of their expressionist
self-perception.
Importance
of the database
The database German literary
Expressionism Online offers unique possibilities for scholarly research. An
extensive digital library with contributions by more than 5,400 artists and
authors of the early 20th century is available at a mouse-click.
Questions
concerning the material, themes and social history of the Expressionist
movement’s entire literary output can be answered here, thanks to the variety
of search categories and excellent subject indexing of each individual text and
picture. Genre specific research is also made considerably easier. The in-depth
subject indexing can reveal authors and artists who await rediscovery, having
long since drifted from the main center of scholarly interest.
Acknowledgments
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the libraries that lent
material and provided invaluable help during the compilation of this work:
Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, Universitätsbibliothek der
Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer
Kulturbesitz, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, Universitäts- und
Stadtbibliothek Köln, Universitätsbibliothek ‘Johann Christian
Senckenberg’ Frankfurt / Main, and Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, which helped
us in the identification of names (PND-IDs).
The
editor
Paul Raabe is a literary scholar and, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung (FAZ), “Germany’s most well-known librarian”. With unparalleled
energy, he influenced institutions that are important centers in Germany’s
academic landscape today: From 1958 to 1968 he was director of the Library of
the Deutsches Literaturarchiv (German Literature Archive) in Marbach, before
becoming director of the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel in 1968. From
1992 to 2000 he was director of the Francke Foundation in Halle. Since his work
in Marbach, Paul Raabe has been recognized as a leading expert on Expressionism.
Besides works on the history of books and libraries, he is the author of
numerous publications about Expressionist, Baroque, Enlightenment and Weimar
Classic literature.
An introduction to the database by Paul Raabe can be found in the menu bar using the link Introduction.
Literature
(1) Raabe,
Paul: Die Zeitschriften und Sammlungen des literarischen Expressionismus.
Repertorium der Zeitschriften, Jahrbücher, Anthologien, Sammelwerke,
Schriftenreihen und Almanache 1910-1921. Stuttgart: Metzler 1964. (Repertorien
zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte 1)
(2) Index Expressionismus. Bibliographie der Beiträge in den Zeitschriften und
Jahrbüchern des literarischen Expressionismus 1910-1925 Edited by Paul Raabe.
18 vols. Nendeln: Kraus-Thomson 1972.
(3) Paul
Raabe:
Die
Autoren und
Bücher des
literarischen Expressionismus: ein bibliographisches Handbuch / In collaboration
with Ingrid Hannich-Bode. 2nd
revised and enlarged edition, including supplements and addenda 1985 - 1990.
Stuttgart:
Metzler 1992.
(4) Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon.
Biographisches und bibliographisches Handbuch. Founded
by Wilhelm Kosch. Edited by Hubert Herkommer and Konrad Feilchenfeldt. 3rd
completely revised edition. Volumes
1-27, Supplement Volumes I-VI. München: K. G.
Saur 1968-2007.
Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon. Das 20. Jahrhundert. Biographisches und
bibliographisches Handbuch. Edited
by Konrad Feilchenfeld. Volumes
1-11. München: K. G. Saur 1999-2008.