ABSTRACT
The chimera of the great war novel, explaining all, was a constant in the intellectual climate of the twenties and even the thirties. Central to the self-image of the avant-garde was the idea of spirit at war, and central to an emergent modernism was a rejection of what were perceived to be the prevailing standards of the nineteenth century, a century which, in terms of the self-assertion of social classes, was very much the century of the bourgeoisie and a century whose dominant social code. In national terms Germany at the turn of the century embodied these tendencies of vitality, growth, and revolt most systematically. In the decorative arts and in architecture Germany was more open to experiment than either France or Britain. In modern dance it was in Germany that Isadora Duncan and Emile Jaques-Dalcroze founded their first schools.
