SOURCE: Weisstein, Ulrich. “Expressionism: Style or Weltanschaung?” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 9, no. 1 (winter 1967): 42-62.

In the following essay, Weisstein considers the question of whether scholars should evaluate Expressionism primarily as a literary style, or whether they need to take into account its social and political dimensions as well.

“No matter how things turn out, one will have to admit that Expressionism was the last common, general, and conscious attempt of a whole generation to instill new life into art, music, and literature.”¹ I think that this holds true even though, geographically speaking, Expressionism was more or less restricted to the Teutonic part of Europe: Germany, Scandinavia, and the Netherlands, including the northern, Flemish part of Belgium (James Ensor). Although, except in the theater—where Tairoff and Meyerhold helped in shaping the physiognomy of “Revolutionary Romanticism”—Russia did not substantially contribute to this general Aufbruch...