11.2.2015 to 26.4.2015 in the Ernst Moritz Arndt House

Between awakening and persistence. The Rhineland and literary life 1900 - 1914

"1914 - In the middle of Europe. The Rhineland and the First World War" was a project of the LVR Department of Culture and Environment with various partners. The patron of the project was Ute Schäfer, Minister for Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sport of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The exhibition had its second stop in Bonn in cooperation with the Bonn City Museum. It was shown in the Ernst Moritz Arndt House in a slightly modified form and with loans from the Kunstmuseum Bonn.

To mark the centenary of the outbreak of war, the Heinrich Heine Institute reconstructed the cultural climate in the Wilhelmine Rhineland before the First World War. The exhibition focused on the art and literature magazine "Die Rheinlande", which was published as the organ of the "Verband der Kunstfreunde in den Ländern am Rhein". In addition to rather conservative writers and artists such as Richard Dehmel, Detlev von Liliencron and Hans Thoma, progressive artistic personalities such as Walter Hasenclever, Hermann Hesse, Peter Hille, Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Robert Walser were also represented.

The supporting association of the "Rheinlande" proved to be just as heterogeneous, uniting dignitaries and aristocrats loyal to the emperor and nationally-minded as well as aspiring industrial citizens, artists and intellectuals. The magazine and its environment thus painted a panorama typical of the time, combining reform and revisionism, precisely that mixture of aggressive backwardness and life-affirming joy for the future from which the First World War also sprang.