Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-2009

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

History

Major Professor

Denise Phillips

Abstract

Drawing on a Painted Canvas: Identity and Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Westphalia" uses an analysis of local visual culture to investigate the interaction of confessional identity, provincial identity, and artistic modernism in nineteenth-century German civil society. Specifically, I approach the research by observing communal identity and its manifestation in not only the pursuits of a German regional art society (which includes the 1907 creation of a provincial museum) but also the creation of a distinct visual culture. With an analysis of local painting and architecture, I also study the particular provincial response to German modernity by gauging the local citizens' perception of artistic modernism. This thesis concludes that "Catholics, like Westphalians in general, appear neither anti-modern nor anti-nationalist, as their identities--like their society, their museum, and their architecture--simply comprised a combination of elements: Catholic and secular, traditional and modern, local and national.

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