culture

Egon Friedell’s Fascinating Cutural Histories

16. March 2023 Harald Sack

On 16 March 1938, at about 22:00, two SA men arrived at the house of prominent Austrian philosopher, historian, journalist and critic Egon Friedell to arrest him. While they were still arguing with his housekeeper, Friedell committed suicide by jumping out of the window. Before leaping, he warned pedestrians walking on the sideway where he hit by shouting “Watch out! Get out of the way!“. This was the tragic end of a brilliant…

cinematography

Walt Disney’s ‘Steamboat Willie’ and the Rise of Mickey Mouse

18. November 2020 Tabea Tietz

On November 18, 1928, Walt Disney’s animated movie ‘Steamboat Willie‘ was released that presented his most famous character ‘Mickey Mouse‘ for the very first time in New York City. The film is also notable for being the first cartoon with synchronized sound. “I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing — that it all started with a mouse.” – Walt Disney, What Is Disneyland television program (27 October 1954) Steamboat…

literature

Friedrich Schiller’s Iconic Sturm and Drang Drama ‘The Robbers’

13. January 2020 Tabea Tietz

On January 13, 1782, Friedrich Schiller’s play ‘The Robbers‘ (Die Räuber) was premiered at the national theatre in Mannheim. The work, which was initially conceived not as a stage play but as a reading drama was written during the Enlightenment and can be attributed to the Sturm und Drang movement in German literature. It was first published anonymously in 1781, then premiered in Mannheim on 13 January 1782, where it caused a national…

art

The Meistersinger of Nuremberg – Hans Sachs

5. November 2019 Harald Sack

On November 5, 1494, German Meistersinger (master singer), poet, playwright, and shoemaker Hans Sachs was born. His work is considered the most important testimony of the bourgeois imperial town culture of the 16th century. What is a Meistersinger? What makes Hans Sachs so special – although you might have never heart of him – is his profession as being a ‘Meistersinger’. Actually, he is also the only ‘Meistersinger’ whose fame lasted over the…

history

Oswald Spengler and the Decline of the West

29. May 2018 Harald Sack

On May 29, 1880, German historian and philosopher Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler was born. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), published in 1918 and 1922, covering all of world history. He proposed a new theory, according to which the lifespan of civilizations is limited and ultimately they decay. “What the myth of Götterdämmerung signified of old, the irreligious form of it, the theory of…

literature

Charles Percy Snow and the Two Cultures

15. October 2017 Harald Sack

G. Rickey Welch, Professor & Joseph N. Tatarewicz On October 15, 1905, English physical chemist and novelist Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow was born. Snow is best known for his series of novels known collectively as Strangers and Brothers, and for The Two Cultures, a 1959 lecture in which he laments the gulf between scientists and “literary intellectuals“. Youth and Education C. P. Snow was born in Leicester to William Snow, a…

anthropology

Alfred L. Kroeber and the Nature of Culture

11. June 2016 Tabea Tietz

On June 11, 1876, American cultural anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber was born. His primary concern was to understand the nature of culture and its processes. He developed the concept of cultures as patterned wholes, each with its own style, and each undergoing a growth process analogous to that of a biological organism. Kroeber also made valuable contributions to the archaeology of New Mexico, Mexico, and Peru. “Anthropology is the most humanistic of…