A failed cultural transfer? Literary internationalism after the First Wold War and the transnational construction of ‘Europe’

In this article we analyze the misunderstandings and asymmetries in cultural transfers by exploring the (nationalist-)internationalist intentions behind the production and reception of the volume Europas Neue Kunst und Dichtung/De Nieuwe Europeesche geest in kunst en letteren (1920). This German-Dutch-Italian-English-Belgian collaboration aimed at a climate of international understanding by informing the European audience about literary developments abroad. The initiators, among them the German art historian Friedrich Markus Huebner, the Belgian journalist Paul Colin and the Dutch literary critic Dirk Coster, believed that a reconciliation of war-torn Europe could be established through a cultural transfer between national literatures, that each in their own, unique way reflected a ‘new European spirit’.