In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

SOBRIETY VS. EXUBERANCE
Philosophical certainties and agreements based on broad consensus seem
to be out of reach. Intellectuals, politicians, and business leaders concentrate
on the pragmatic realities of everydayness, instead of trying to
ground their actions in ultimate truths. [see Uncertainty vs. Reality] This
everydayness has no context of religious transcendence from which stable
meanings or goal-oriented visions could emerge. [see Transcendence
= Immanence (Death)] A constant search for norms and models that
would make it possible to assess and shape reality has replaced the old
cosmologies. This search is conducted in the spirit of Sobriety, an attitude
adopted by those who have abandoned the hope of achieving any kind
of revealed knowledge or ultimate wisdom. In the dramatic words of the
painter Oskar Schlemmer, who teaches at the Bauhaus [see Engineers],
the longing for world-immanent norms is a way of resisting the threat
of impending chaos: "If today's arts love the machine, technology, and
organization, if they aspire to precision and reject anything vague and
dreamy, this implies an instinctive repudiation of chaos and a longing to
find the form appropriate to our times" (Willet, 117).
Neue Sachlichkeit ("New Sobriety"), the German name for this movement,
underscores its tendency to focus on "things"-more precisely, on
the calculable things of the quotidian. World-immanent things are expected
to provide orientation and norms. The realm of industry is important
to this new attitude, because it measures efficiency in money and
units of labor and because industrial planning constantly invents new
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