Von Winckelmann zu Marx und Engels. Kulturelle Toleranz als ein Problem der ästhetischen Beziehungen zwischen Klassizismus und Historismus
From Winckelmann to Marx and Engels: Cultural tolerance as a problem of aesthetic relations between historicism and classicism: the case of Lifšits

Summary/Abstract: This article examines a significant aesthetic dimension of the neo-Marxist politics of history, the struggle against historical relativism (the 'eclecticist pluralism') in the modern treatment of art and culture. The author focuses on the Marxism on 'classicistic grounds' of Mikhail Lifšits (1905-1983), primarily on his reception of Winckelmann and its aesthetic and political contexts. In his primarily historicist-theoretical approach, the author presents well-justified criticism of Lifšits, and also stresses the historiographic need for a more objective picture of Lifšits, including his relations with the leading Marxist aesthetician György Lukács (1885-1971), who became his friend. This is a critical examination focusing on Stalinist-era Russia, which influenced the Baltic culture of remembrance, where the names of Winckelmann and Lifšits remain connected as a sign of a historical period of aesthetics.

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