Expressionismus

Expressionismus, a movement in art and literature in the 20th c. It first becomes prominent in painting and sculpture with the short-lived groups Der blaue Reiter and Die Brücke. Its principal exponents were the painters M. Beckmann, E. Heckel, E. L. Kirchner, O. Kokoschka, Paula Modersohn-Becker, E. Nolde, K. Schmidt-Rottluff, and W. Kandinsky. F. Marc is sometimes grouped with the Expressionists, though his mature style is closer to Cubism. E. Barlach was its most prominent sculptor. Its first exponent in music was A. Schönberg, in film R. Wiene (1881-1938) with Das Cabinett des Dr. Caligari (1919). Its main journals were Der Sturm and Die Aktion, edited by H. Walden and F. Pfemfert respectively. An extensive bibliography of journals (1910-25) and their contributors, Index Expressionismus (18 vols.), ed. P. Raabe, appeared in 1972.

Expressionism in literature manifests itself about 1910, though signs of it are perceptible in certain plays of Wedekind. The movement has some analogies to the Sturm und Drang and was accompanied by a renewed interest in the works of J. M. R. Lenz and G. Büchner. Expressionism reacted against Naturalism and the effeteness of neo-Romanticism (see Neuromantik and Dekadenz). Its aim is to show the truth within, not in psychological analysis, but by proclaiming man's aspirations, hopes, and fears. Its style, both in poetry and in drama, is exclamatory and elliptical (frequent omission of verbs and articles), and has been called ‘Telegrammstil’ (as distinct from the Naturalistic ‘Sekundenstil’). Its tone is by turns ecstatic, minatory, satirical, grotesque, and also noted for the ‘scream’ (‘Schreidrama’), in reaction to which G. Kaiser, in his tract Vision und Figur (1918) stressed the need for an articulate presentation of the ‘vision of the New Man’. Expressionism developed the form of ‘Stationendrama’ and favoured characters that are indicated by a role, such as ‘der Vater’, ‘der Ingenieur’, etc. The Expressionists were radicals, concerned less with party politics than with a fundamental change of attitude, often expressed in terms of the regeneration of Man. In this respect they owe something to Nietzsche. Among the variety of themes the conflict of generations is prominent and is at the centre of R. Sorge's Der Bettler of 1912, though O. Kokoschka's play on the conflict of the sexes, Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (1910) is regarded as the first Expressionist play. Über den Expressionismus in der Literatur und die neue Dichtung by Kasimir Edschmid was the most noted essay defining the movement's aims.

The principal dramatists of Expressionism, many of whom are antagonistic to material progress and the rise of the industrial and technological society, are E. Barlach, B. Brecht (in his early work), R. Goering, W. Hasenclever, H. Johst, G. Kaiser, G. Sack, C. Sternheim, and F. von Unruh. Among the poets are G. Benn, J. R. Becher, G. Heym, Else Lasker-Schüler, E. Stadler, A. Stramm, F. Schnack, G. Trakl, and F. Werfel. Several of these later turned away from the Expressionistic style. Fiction commended itself less to Expressionist writers, but some novels of A. Döblin and early stories by Kafka have a kinship with the Expressionist outlook. As a movement Expressionism rose to its height in the 1914-18 War and died away in the early 1920s, but traces of its style persist, though these also tend to be associated with Neue Sachlichkeit. Precise divisions between late Expressionism and the realistic, sombre or satirical representation of reality, a hallmark of Neue Sachlichkeit, can barely be ascertained.