Rhythmus und Zivilisation um 1900

Around 1900 in Germany, people’s “arrhythmia” was presented by a certain number of authors as the symptom of a sick civilisation that absolutely needed to be saved from decline. The disappearance of rhythm observed in a large number of fields seemed moreover to affirm the triumph of a materialistic and “microscopic” vision of the world which blinded man to the miracles of life, while in schools and universities a model of utilitarian tuition was being asserted that favoured technical knowledge to the prejudice of intuition, sense of synthesis and creativity. Concurrently to this diagnosis, the same conception of rhythm that is supposed to have initially played a great role in the socialization of mankind and in the development of culture, is to be found at the heart of utopian undertakings based on gymnastics and dance aimed at retransforming a “mechanised” and “dislocated” social body into a healthy and fraternal community. Beyond conflicts of terminology and method opposing different representatives of the “rhythm movement”, this study endeavours to enlighten individual and collective motivations of this discourse, to bring out the psychosocial mechanisms that traverse it, as well as the reasons for its success, while repositioning it in the historical, social and cultural context that engendered it.