Weimar New Objectivity blended realism, social critique, and new media.

Evidence

John Willett captures the particular quality of the Berlin avant garde in his important study of the Neue Sachlichkeit, the distinctive cultural style of Weimar Germany in its brief period of stability between 1923 and 1928, a new realism that sought methods of dealing both with real subjects and with real human needs, a sharply critical view of existing society and individuals, and a determination to master new media and discover new collective approaches to the communica­ tion of artistic concepts. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 249

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) as a distinctive Weimar style — the term the chapter is organized around.
• QUESTION: Worth pinning down whether Willett’s framing of the Berlin avant garde as collective-communication-oriented prefigures or complicates the reader’s claim that modernism was individualist.