War and Peace in the Worlds of Rudolf H. Sauter

List of Figures; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Reconstructing a Creative Life; 1. Beginnings, 1890–1914; 2. Internment, 1914–19; 3. Recovery, 1919–24; 4. Artistry I, 1924–39; 5. Artistry II, 1939–50; 6. Reflections, 1950–77; Conclusion: Legacy; Epilogue: In His Own Words; Selected Bibliography; Index.

“Jeffrey S. Reznick’s War and Peace in the Worlds of Rudolf H. Sauter: A Cultural History of a Creative Life picks up the Edwardian world of culture and elegance as brilliantly outlined in Reznick’s earlier study of John Galsworthy and the wounded of the Great War. Rudolf H. Sauter, a German painter and poet, was part of that fluid world of Victorian and Wilhelminian Europe that easily and confidently crossed national and cultural borders until 1914. Married to Galsworthy’s sister, friend of Whistler and Conrad (two other foreigners stranded in Great Britain) he was arrested and then exiled back to Germany because of his nationality during World War One. The ‘war wounded’ that Reznick described in his earlier book did not include those displaced and exiled. In this brilliant and detailed account of Sauter’s life and work, he opens a new yet pressing question: what happens in times of radical displacement, such as ours, to the creative individuals whose lives are mangled and confused by a politics beyond their control. An important book to begin our understanding of cultural displacement in the 20th and 21st centuries.” —Sander L. Gilman, Distinguished professor of the liberal arts and sciences and professor of psychiatry (emeritus), Emory University, US.