Jugendstil

n.
A style of architecture and decorative art similar to art nouveau, popular in German-speaking areas of Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[German : Jugend, youth + Stil, style.]

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This term (meaning ‘youth style’) was used in Germany and Scandinavia to describe Art Nouveau and derived from the decorative arts magazine Jugend (1896-1914), published in Munich and widely circulated amongst those interested in the decorative arts. This organic, curvilinear style was at its height in Scandinavia, particularly Helsinki, around 1900.

“Youth style”; the German version of Art Nouveau.

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Jugendstil, designation for a stylistic trend in the arts c.1895-1905 (cf. art nouveau). In Germany it was propagated by the periodical Jugend (which gave it its name) primarily in reaction against the style of the preceding decades, the Gründerzeit. It encouraged functional, linear ornamentation modelled on the Pre-Raphaelite movement in England and on Japanese art. In literature the term has been used in connection with, among others, Dehmel, Flaischlen, S. George, Hofmannsthal, and Rilke, especially in their early poetry. See also Sezessionen.