The Hartlaub family - Perception of history and aesthetic concepts in the early 20th century

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Harald Tausch
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 250830442

The scientific project dealing with literature and culture in the early 20th century will examine the perception of history and the development of scientific as well as aesthetic projects in a historical period marked by catastrophes. It will focus on the diverging but interconnected views and writings of an important family who have been neglected by cultural-scientific research: the family of Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub, an art-historian, his wife Félicie, who worked as a journalist, and their two children, the historian and writer Felix Hartlaub and the writer Geno Hartlaub. The project assumes that history between 1933 and 1945 represents the historical a priori of aesthetic concepts as well as of scientific research. The project will prove that the critical reflection of history was central for this family and some acquainted circles of intellectuals of the late Weimar Republic (philosophers, aestheticians, art-historians, writers and feature writers: Aby Warburg, Gustav Radbruch, Theodor W. Adorno and others more). It will examine these constellations which have been totally neglected so far. It will focus on scientific and aesthetic concepts concerning melancholy, alchemy and magic, but also on their modifications and changes under the impressions of the years before and after 1933 as they were discussed in this group. History of literature and history of ideas will be combined in order to discover and describe unique aesthetic concepts. The project embeds the era from 1933 to 1945 in a broader period of time: from 1928 to 1958.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants