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Fleeting Hope in Foreboding Times: The 1932 Goethe Year in Argentina
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- By Robert Kelz
- Edited by Patricia Anne Simpson, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Birgit Tautz, Bowdoin College, Maine
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- Book:
- Goethe Yearbook 29
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 15 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 14 June 2022, pp 95-118
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Summary
Abstract: This article on the 1932 Goethe Year in Buenos Aires is a prequel to my study on the 1949 Argentine Goethe Year, which appeared in the 2021 Goethe Yearbook. The essay at hand examines commemorations of Goethe from March to October 1932 amid acute political, social, and economic crises in authoritarian Argentina. Its purview spans musical performances, school festivities, academic lectures, gallery exhibitions, and written scholarship. While most activities occurred in Buenos Aires, this transatlantic investigation also covers Argentine perceptions of European Goethe tributes and publications. No German author was so widely acclaimed; thus, the homages permit an analysis of Goethe's resonance across the breadth of Argentina's educated population, including Argentines of diverse political persuasions, European nationals and immigrants, and German-speaking nationalist and republican blocs. Goethe's reception also sheds insights on local perspectives concerning the global clash between humanism and nationalism, German and Latin American literary history, and the intensifying factionalism in German Buenos Aires. The 1932 Goethe Year reveals how host and immigrant populations drew hope from the iconic poet in a futile attempt to confront the foreboding times that would see humanity plunge to a nadir.
Keywords: Goethe, Argentina, Germany, internationalism, humanism, nationalist
Introduction
THIS ARTICLE ON the 1932 Goethe Year in Argentina is a prequel to my essay on the nation's commemorations of the 1949 Goethe Year, which appeared in the 2021 Goethe Yearbook. The two pieces share a locale and have many common protagonists, thus, although the focus here is on the centenary of Goethe's death, I will occasionally refer to the events in 1949 to plot the trajectory of several fundamental themes across the intervening seventeen tumultuous years. The 1932 Goethe Year portrays how Argentines and German immigrants perceived and celebrated Goethe locally, offering contrasting perspectives from host and immigrant populations, who themselves were not monolithic entities. The tributes to Goethe inform an evolving dialogue among these groups, revealing widening chasms among Germans and simmering tensions between them and their hosts as they contended with acute social and political crises on the cusp of a global calamity. Yet Goethe's universal appeal transcended divergences in politics, ethnicity, religion, and academic disciplines; thus, the centenary also saw cross-cultural projects among diverse German immigrants, Argentines, and European institutions. Furthermore, as I noted in my essay on the 1949 Goethe Year, Argentines and immigrants linked Goethe with other national literary icons, such as Dante, Shakespeare, and Cervantes.
Instrument or Inspiration? Commemorating the 1949 Goethe Year in Argentina
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- By Robert Kelz
- Edited by Patricia Anne Simpson, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Birgit Tautz, Bowdoin College, Maine, Sean Franzel, University of Missouri, Columbia
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- Book:
- Goethe Yearbook 28
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 15 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 15 June 2021, pp 263-284
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Summary
Abstract: This essay examines commemorations of the 1949 Goethe Year in postwar Peronist Argentina. Its purview includes numerous musical performances, theatrical presentations, academic lectures, and written scholarship. Most activities occurred in the capital city of Buenos Aires; however, this investigation also makes excursions beyond the epicenter to Mendoza, La Plata, and Rosario, as well as neighboring Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil. There was no German author so broadly recognized and esteemed as Goethe, so the plethora of tributes to him represent an opportunity to analyze the resonance of a German figure among the full diversity of Argentina's educated population, including Argentines of all political persuasions, European nationals and immigrants, and large, conflictive German-speaking blocs of antifascist, Jews, nationalists, and recently arrived Nazis. The sweeping range of homages permits an analysis of Goethe's reception among all these groups while providing insights into their perspectives on Peronism, Nazism, postwar European politics, and, especially, Argentine literary history. Argentina and Goethe are twin lenses for exploring the role of art as an instrument and an inspiration in the cultural contact zones that existed among immigrant groups, their hosts, and nations of origin.
Keywords: intercultural, humanism, nationalist, Peronism, postwar, reconciliation
AGAINST THE BACKDROP of the 1949 Goethe Year in Argentina, this essay investigates several core themes across host and immigrant populations. The commemoration of the 1949 bicentenary of Goethe's birth depicts a bidirectional relationship that informs both how Argentines interpreted and deployed Goethe locally and, reciprocally, sheds light on how he influenced national literary history. No figure in German literature had such wide, intercultural appeal as Goethe, so the tributes to him also document German-speakers’ integration into Argentine cultural life and the positions that Argentines took toward the immigrants among them. Furthermore, the commemorations in 1949 track the trajectory of ongoing disputes and shifting alliances within German Buenos Aires as well as transatlantic projects between immigrants and their European Fatherland. Notably, Argentines and immigrants alike often compared Goethe with other singular national icons, such as Dante, Shakespeare, and Cervantes. Goethe was the exception, not the rule, so this article, the first in a two-part series, also investigates whether the Goethe Year represents an outlier amid broader social, political, and cultural developments. Finally, for reasons of language, geography, and otherwise, Latin American Germanists have a scant presence in German studies in the USA.
8 - True to Himself: Stefan Zweig's Visit to Argentina in September 1936
- from Part IV - Politics and Exile
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- By Robert Kelz, University of Memphis
- Edited by Birger Vanwesenbeeck, Assistant Professor of English at the State University of New York-Fredonia, Mark H. Gelber, Professor of German at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
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- Book:
- Stefan Zweig and World Literature
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 05 May 2015
- Print publication:
- 29 December 2014, pp 155-172
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Summary
The very first lines of one of Stefan Zweig's most famous works, Schachnovelle (“The Royal Game,” 1942), set the novella on a steamer en route to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Twice, in 1936 and 1940, Stefan Zweig himself arrived in the Argentine capital on board an international passenger ship. Argentina, however, has always played second fiddle to Brazil in scholarship on Stefan Zweig, and his relationship to this country remains an underexplored topic. In part this tendency is reflective of the writer's own views. From the very start Zweig himself preferred Brazil to its southerly neighbor and, over time, he developed more profound ties to Brazil than to Argentina.
Yet Stefan Zweig's relationship to Argentina is worth a second look. Zweig's books were widely read in Argentina, and he collaborated closely with Alfredo Cahn, his translator and literary agent there. Alongside Zweig's New York publishers, Ben Huebsch and Gottfried Bermann Fischer, Cahn was one of only three people to whom Zweig mailed copies of his Schachnovelle on February 21, 1942, just a day before he committed suicide. In total, Zweig spent approximately six weeks in Argentina. His activities were not confined to the capital of Buenos Aires, but included visits to the cities of Rosario, Córdoba, Santa Fe, and La Plata. Although he never did achieve fluency in Portuguese, by the time of his second visit to Argentina Zweig had become sufficiently proficient in Spanish to lecture almost exclusively in this language, the native tongue of most Argentines. Furthermore, as an exiled Jewish writer, Zweig found much of interest in Argentina. His close friend Paul Zech emigrated to Buenos Aires in 1933, and was only one of over forty-five thousand Jewish refugees received by Argentina during the so-called Third Reich, the highest number of any Latin American country.
Most researchers have focused on Zweig's second trip to Argentina in 1940 and generally made use of two sources on the writer's activities there: his voluminous correspondence and the sympathetic record of his visits left behind by Alfredo Cahn, and Alfredo Bauer's fictionalized biography of Zweig, an informative, though not always factual, source.
Contributors
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- By Waiel Almoustadi, Brian J. Anderson, David B. Auyong, Michael Avidan, Michael J. Avram, Roland J. Bainton, Jeffrey R. Balser, Juliana Barr, W. Scott Beattie, Manfred Blobner, T. Andrew Bowdle, Walter A. Boyle, Eugene B. Campbell, Laura F. Cavallone, Mario Cibelli, C. Michael Crowder, Ola Dale, M. Frances Davies, Mark Dershwitz, George Despotis, Clifford S. Deutschman, Brian S. Donahue, Marcel E. Durieux, Thomas J. Ebert, Talmage D. Egan, Helge Eilers, E. Wesley Ely, Charles W. Emala, Alex S. Evers, Heidrun Fink, Pierre Foëx, Stuart A. Forman, Helen F. Galley, Josephine M. Garcia-Ferrer, Robert W. Gereau, Tony Gin, David Glick, B. Joseph Guglielmo, Dhanesh K. Gupta, Howard B. Gutstein, Robert G. Hahn, Greg B. Hammer, Brian P. Head, Helen Higham, Laureen Hill, Kirk Hogan, Charles W. Hogue, Christopher G. Hughes, Eric Jacobsohn, Roger A. Johns, Dean R. Jones, Max Kelz, Evan D. Kharasch, Ellen W. King, W. Andrew Kofke, Tom C. Krejcie, Richard M. Langford, H. T. Lee, Isobel Lever, Jerrold H. Levy, J. Lance Lichtor, Larry Lindenbaum, Hung Pin Liu, Geoff Lockwood, Alex Macario, Conan MacDougall, M. B. MacIver, Aman Mahajan, Nándor Marczin, J. A. Jeevendra Martyn, George A. Mashour, Mervyn Maze, Thomas McDowell, Stuart McGrane, Berend Mets, Patrick Meybohm, Charles F. Minto, Jonathan Moss, Mohamed Naguib, Istvan Nagy, Nick Oliver, Paul S. Pagel, Pratik P. Pandharipande, Piyush Patel, Andrew J. Patterson, Robert A. Pearce, Ronald G. Pearl, Misha Perouansky, Kristof Racz, Chinniampalayam Rajamohan, Nilesh Randive, Imre Redai, Stephen Robinson, Richard W. Rosenquist, Carl E. Rosow, Uwe Rudolph, Francis V. Salinas, Robert D. Sanders, Sunita Sastry, Michael Schäfer, Jens Scholz, Thomas W. Schnider, Mark A. Schumacher, John W. Sear, Frédérique S. Servin, Jeffrey H. Silverstein, Tom De Smet, Martin Smith, Joe Henry Steinbach, Markus Steinfath, David F. Stowe, Gary R. Strichartz, Michel M. R. F. Struys, Isao Tsuneyoshi, Robert A. Veselis, Arthur Wallace, Robert P. Walt, David C. Warltier, Nigel R. Webster, Jeanine Wiener-Kronish, Troy Wildes, Paul Wischmeyer, Ling-Gang Wu, Stephen Yang
- Edited by Alex S. Evers, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, Mervyn Maze, University of California, San Francisco, Evan D. Kharasch, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis
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- Book:
- Anesthetic Pharmacology
- Published online:
- 11 April 2011
- Print publication:
- 10 March 2011, pp viii-xiv
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