Fleeting Hope in Foreboding Times: The 1932 Goethe Year in Argentina

Abstract:This article on the 1932 Goethe Year in Buenos Aires is a prequel to my study on the 1949 Argentine Goethe Year, which appeared in the 2021 Goethe Yearbook. The essay at hand examines commemorations of Goethe from March to October 1932 amid acute political, social, and economic crises in authoritarian Argentina. Its purview spans musical performances, school festivities, academic lectures, gallery exhibitions, and written scholarship. While most activities occurred in Buenos Aires, this transatlantic investigation also covers Argentine perceptions of European Goethe tributes and publications. No German author was so widely acclaimed; thus, the homages permit an analysis of Goethe's resonance across the breadth of Argentina's educated population, including Argentines of diverse political persuasions, European nationals and immigrants, and German-speaking nationalist and republican blocs. Goethe's reception also sheds insights on local perspectives concerning the global clash between humanism and nationalism, German and Latin American literary history, and the intensifying factionalism in German Buenos Aires. The 1932 Goethe Year reveals how host and immigrant populations drew hope from the iconic poet in a futile attempt to confront the foreboding times that would see humanity plunge to a nadir.