Legnica-based magazines “Die Saat”, “Niederschlesien”, and “Schlesien” as a vehicle for promoting the Homeland Art movement (Heimatkunstbewegung) in its late phase

Abstract

The paper provides an analysis of selected texts from three literary or sociocultural magazines published in the 1920s in Legnica (until 1945, Liegnitz). Their social and ideological message revolves around the glorification of the local homeland (Heimat), which frequently consists in the rejection of the so-called progressive tendencies in German culture (for instance expressionism). Particular literary and journalistic texts support the contention that the Homeland Art movement (Heimatkunstbewegung) was hugely influential in Lower Silesia after the end of World War I. One of the most important factors having an impact on the popularity in Lower Silesia of this cultural movement developing at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was the complicated political situation in Upper Silesia, as a result of which the province was divided between Poland and Germany at the beginning of the 1920s.