Fracture: Life and Culture in the West, 1918-1938

by Philipp Blom

Debates about Darwin and Nietzsche, about evolution and radical moral doubt, echoed through this deeply unsettled period. They represented the two most important ways to conjure up the spirit of the age and its great ideal: the New Man, the answer to the trauma of the war and the reign of anonymous technology. New Men could be bred selectively, and they could create themselves through an act of heroic self-transcendence. It was a great but ambiguous dream, and the image of this great hero was enlisted to serve ideas on both the right and the left, pursued by scientists and occultists alike, venerated in many forms and rituals. The dream of the New Man was evident in the work of artists and the earnest idealism of nudist associations venerating sun and air, in the public fascination with competitive sport, fashion for new body lines, and scientific advances. But it was an ambiguous dream now, teetering on the verge of nightmare. The experience of the First World War had shown that technological progress was no longer inherently positive, that machines could become malign, and that, like Goethe’s sorcerer’s apprentice, humanity could no longer rid itself of the spirits it had called. The New Man was simultaneously the era’s most potent promise and its greatest threat.