The Janus Face of the German Avant-Garde: From Expressionism Toward Postmodernism

Among the avant-garde of the early twentieth century, the German movement remains one of the least understood in the current avant-garde and modernism debates. Rainer Rumold fills this gap with the first large-scale reassessment of the heyday and afterlife of German expressionist and Dada productions as a prolonged crisis of literary culture.

"A notable, important contribution to twentieth-century avant-garde studies which, substantially different from Peter BÜrger, defines the German avant-garde as mediating modernity and tradition, as a transitional phenomenon." --Tyrus Miller, University of California at Santa Cruz

"Theoretically sophisticated and stimulating . . . a valuable contribution." --Monatshefte