The Dürerbund was an organization of writers and artists with a strong influence on the intellectual life of the middle class

Middle class

The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....

 in the German Reich, but also in Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 and Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

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The Dürerbund was founded in 1902 by the German publisher Ferdinand Avenarius

Ferdinand Avenarius

Ferdinand Avenarius was a lyric poet, a leading representative of the culture reform movement of his time and the first popularizer of Sylt.-Life:...

, a brother of the philosopher Richard Avenarius

Richard Avenarius

Richard Heinrich Ludwig Avenarius was a German-Swiss philosopher. He formulated the radical positivist doctrine of "empirical criticism" or empirio-criticism....

, and the art historian Paul Schumann. It resided in Dresden-Blasewitz

Blasewitz

Besides being an urban and often preferred multiple dwelling villa quarter with appealing architecture situated on the Elbe river Blasewitz is also a larger borough of Dresden, Germany in the eastern centre of the city...

 and had close connections to Deutscher Werkbund

Deutscher Werkbund

The Deutscher Werkbund was a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists. The Werkbund was to become an important event in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the later creation of the Bauhaus school of design...

  and the garden city movement

Garden city movement

The garden city movement is a method of urban planning that was initiated in 1898 by Sir Ebenezer Howard in the United Kingdom. Garden cities were intended to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts" , containing proportionate areas of residences, industry and...

, as Avenarius was a key person in these organizations too.

The Dürerbund was not only the leading cultural organization in Germany that time, moreover it aimed at contributing to aesthetic education and education to love of nature of the broad masses. For many years, it was organized like a reading circle in which publications as Der Kunstwart, a magazine initiated and edited by Avenarius, could be distributed effectively. Among the many widely known authors were Hermann Bahr

Hermann Bahr

Hermann Bahr was an Austrian writer, playwright, director, and critic.-Biography:Born and raised in Linz, Bahr studied Philosophy, Law, Economics and Philology in Vienna, Czernowitz and Berlin. During a prolonged stay in Paris he discovered his interest in literature and art...

, Christian Morgenstern

Christian Morgenstern

Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern was a German author and poet from Munich. Morgenstern married Margareta Gosebruch von Liechtenstern on March 7, 1910...

, Peter Rosegger

Peter Rosegger

Peter Rosegger was an Austrian poet from the province of Styria. He was a son of a farmer and grew up in the forests and fields. Rosegger went on to become a most productive poet and author as well as an insightful teacher and visionary...

, Georg Simmel

Georg Simmel

Georg Simmel was a major German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach laid the foundations for sociological antipositivism, asking 'What is society?' in a direct allusion to Kant's question 'What is nature?',...

, and Carl Spitteler

Carl Spitteler

Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler was a Swiss poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1919. His work includes both pessimistic and heroic poems....

. Renowned personalities participated in the management board of the association, among them Adolf Bartels

Adolf Bartels

Adolf Bartels was a German journalist and poet. Known for his völkisch worldview, he has been seen as a harbinger of National Socialist anti-Semitism....

, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach was an Austrian writer. Noted for her excellent psychological novels, she is regarded—together with Ferdinand von Saar—as one of the most important German-language writers of the latter portion of the 19th century.She was born at the castle of Dubský...

, Karl Lamprecht, Friedrich Naumann, and Henry Thode

Henry Thode

Henry Thode was a German art historian.-Biography:He was an art historian at the time of the Weimar republic...

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Key dates of the Dürerbund:

• 1902 Establishment of the Dürerbund in Dresden
• 1910 Erection of the Dürerbundhaus in Dresden-Blasewitz
• 1912 Dürerbund had 300,000 members
• 1914 Establishment of the Dürerbund-Werkbund-Genossenschaft in Hellerau
  Hellerau
  Hellerau is a quarter in the City of Dresden, Germany. It was the first garden city in Germany.Based on the ideas of Ebenezer Howard, businessman Karl Schmidt-Hellerau founded Hellerau near Dresden in 1909. The idea was to create an organic, planned community...
  
  , which published the Deutsche Warenbuch evaluating industrial products for the consumers
• 1923 Avenarius died, Paul Schumann und Wolfgang Schumann took leadership
• 1935 Dürerbund closed, the painter Karl Hanusch was the last head

Further reading

• Gerhard Kratzsch. Kunstwart und Dürerbund. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Gebildeten im Zeitalter des Imperialismus. Vandenhoeck u. Ruprecht, Göttingen 1969. ISBN 3-525-36125-4.