German Expressionism, a multi-art movement lasting from 1905 (Die Brücke) to well into the late 1920s, has experienced numerous centennial celebrations over the last two decades. This September, the first conference identifying connections between “Expressionism and Colonialism” and focusing primarily on literary Expressionism took place at the University of London (Goldsmiths), organized by Profs. Frank Krause and Andreas Kramer.

“Focusing on the nexus between literary Expressionism and German and European colonialism, the conference provides an opportunity to explore some of the following questions:

• How do Expressionist writings represent, construct, imagine, or respond to colonialism?
• In what ways have expressionist Exoticism, Primitivism, Africanism and Orientalism been framed by colonialist ideas and practice?
• What form does the engagement with colonialism take in Expressionist literature – poems, fiction and drama, or larger literary projects such as anthologies and journal issues – and other writings, such as essays, manifestoes, travelogues, autobiographies, translations, letters and diaries?
• To what extent are the imagined societies, cultural geographies and figurative tropes in expressionist writing shaped by or subverting colonial fantasies?
• What can Germanists and Comparatists learn from the reception of expressionist literature in formerly colonised countries, and what lessons might the research community have to learn from non-European colleagues?
• To what extent does Expressionism’s nexus with colonialism warrant a revision of the received understanding of the movement’s transnational and universalist tendencies?
• Might addressing the nexus require or lead to new methodological approaches to Expressionist writing?”

Prof. Finger delivered the keynote lecture on “Augmenting the Nexus between German Expressionism and Colonialism,” arguing for a much overdue closer look at German Expressionism 100 years later:

“Only recently have scholars added new angles that, somehow, got lost in time or in the archives: the volume of materials produced by women, especially by women authors – Barbara Wright has counted around 310, based on the Index Expressionismus; and, as under discussion here, a focus on themes, authors, and artistic products connected to Germany’s colonial past that have not been addressed thoroughly or even critically in the many volumes and exhibitions on German Expressionism.”

The conference will be followed up with a book project.