Instrument or Inspiration? Commemorating the 1949 Goethe Year in Argentina

Summary

Abstract: This essay examines commemorations of the 1949 Goethe Year in postwar Peronist Argentina. Its purview includes numerous musical performances, theatrical presentations, academic lectures, and written scholarship. Most activities occurred in the capital city of Buenos Aires; however, this investigation also makes excursions beyond the epicenter to Mendoza, La Plata, and Rosario, as well as neighboring Uruguay, Chile, and Brazil. There was no German author so broadly recognized and esteemed as Goethe, so the plethora of tributes to him represent an opportunity to analyze the resonance of a German figure among the full diversity of Argentina's educated population, including Argentines of all political persuasions, European nationals and immigrants, and large, conflictive German-speaking blocs of antifascist, Jews, nationalists, and recently arrived Nazis. The sweeping range of homages permits an analysis of Goethe's reception among all these groups while providing insights into their perspectives on Peronism, Nazism, postwar European politics, and, especially, Argentine literary history. Argentina and Goethe are twin lenses for exploring the role of art as an instrument and an inspiration in the cultural contact zones that existed among immigrant groups, their hosts, and nations of origin.

Keywords: intercultural, humanism, nationalist, Peronism, postwar, reconciliation

AGAINST THE BACKDROP of the 1949 Goethe Year in Argentina, this essay investigates several core themes across host and immigrant populations. The commemoration of the 1949 bicentenary of Goethe's birth depicts a bidirectional relationship that informs both how Argentines interpreted and deployed Goethe locally and, reciprocally, sheds light on how he influenced national literary history. No figure in German literature had such wide, intercultural appeal as Goethe, so the tributes to him also document German-speakers’ integration into Argentine cultural life and the positions that Argentines took toward the immigrants among them. Furthermore, the commemorations in 1949 track the trajectory of ongoing disputes and shifting alliances within German Buenos Aires as well as transatlantic projects between immigrants and their European Fatherland. Notably, Argentines and immigrants alike often compared Goethe with other singular national icons, such as Dante, Shakespeare, and Cervantes. Goethe was the exception, not the rule, so this article, the first in a two-part series, also investigates whether the Goethe Year represents an outlier amid broader social, political, and cultural developments. Finally, for reasons of language, geography, and otherwise, Latin American Germanists have a scant presence in German studies in the USA.