From the 1890s until the end of the First World War, Munich was the city where the cultural contradictions of newly unified Germany revealed themselves most starkly.  By 1900, aesthetic decadence, symptomatic of the decline of bourgeois culture in the wake of modernization, began to influence the artistic scene.

Juxtaposed against decadence were a variety of efforts to rejuvenate German culture:  the revival of traditional popular arts, attempts to forge an intellectual aristocracy through art noveau, and a variety of avant garde movements.

We will examine these movements in literature as well as in painting and architecture as we analyze such questions as to what extent did the various movements to create new values mirror the logic of decadence; what were the politics of the cult of youth and beauty; and what do gender relations in artistic works tell us about the reactionary or progressive potential of various artistic movements?