What is Modernism?

Despite different recent publications investigating global and lesser-known modernisms, Luxembourg remains a blank spot on the map of modernism studies. To some extent, this is surprising. As Gast Mannes notes in his seminal work Luxemburgische Avantgarde of 2007, the underrepresentation of Luxembourgish authors and artists in the history of high modernism is not altogether justified, due to the fact that »individual authors, partly due to bilingualism, played a special role in the transfer of ideas between France and Germany«—a fact that is little known, both in Luxembourg and abroad. To a similar extent, Luxembourg’s absence from modernism studies is unsurprising. One significant factor is that, for many years, the Luxembourgish public, cultural institutions, and creators have placed more value on works of international renown than on Luxembourgish art and literature. This article argues that understanding the invention, management, and rejection of traditions in parallel to avant-garde works is important as it valorises literary and artistic production that could be categorised as »juste milieu«, as moderately modernist, as significant, even revolutionary, in its context, even if not necessarily so from an international perspective