Sommerakademien der deutschen Stiftung - Studienstiftung.ch

Arbeitsgruppe 7
Minor Utopias. Aspects of Internationalism in the
20th Century
The history of nationalism and internationalism are bound together in an inextricable embrace,
both in the 19th and the 20th centuries and beyond. Nationalist forces, world wars
and dictatorial regimes prevailed until the middle of the 20th century, while internationalism
hardly gained momentum. And yet within the nationalist moment of the mid-20th
century, there were clear internationalist movements and tendencies dedicated to limiting
the sovereignty of states who committed crimes not only against their external enemies
but against their own citizens. Minor utopias emerged out of the dystopias of the 20th
century; they are minor in the sense that they don’t aim at the end of all social conflict,
but at the end of war and flagrant injustice; they are minor in that they do not require
the creation of mountains of corpses to realize them. We would like to focus on a variety
of internationalist initiatives which tried to foster an almost utopian task: peace among
peoples and nations. A number of outstanding events, institutions, and personalities, will
be studied in the light of the following leading questions: What was the notion of ‘peace’
around 1900 in politics, law, and the arts, at the Paris World’s Fair and the Hague Conferences
(1899 and 1907)? Was there a specific relevance of individual initiatives such as
Albert Kahn‘s „Bourse autour du monde“ (1898ff.) or Hendrik Andersen’s project of a
„World Centre of Communication“ (1913)? How did the outlook of politics and architecture
change after World War I with the foundation of the League of Nations and its palace
in Geneva, which was intended to be supplemented by a Cité Mondiale, designed by Paul
Otlet and Le Corbusier? Did Picasso’s „Guernica“ in the 1937 Paris World’s Fair mark a
watershed toward World War II? What incited René Cassin and others to formulate the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)?
Leitung
Teilnehmer
Literatur
110
Prof. Dr. Jörg Martin Merz
Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Universität Münster
Prof. Dr. Jay Winter
Department of History, Yale University
Studierende der Geschichte und Kunstgeschichte, der Rechts-,
Politik- und Literaturwissenschaft sowie der Philosophie
Winter, J., Dreams of Peace and Freedom. Utopian Moments in
the 20th Century, New Haven-London 2006.
Gresleri, G./Matteoni D., La città mondiale. Andersen – Hébrard
– Otlet – Le Corbusier, Venedig 1982.
Manela, E., The Wilsonian Moment. Self-determination and the
International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism, Oxford 2007.
Akademie X Rot International