Die Existentialisten

The study explores the so-called Existentialist movement that was formed in Paris in the years 1945 to about 1960. The movement is of historical importance insofar that it had considerable effect on its generational conscience, i.e. the binding intellectual forces of its generation. Therefore the method of approach chosen for this inquiry is a history of generation in the tradition of the German sociologist Karl Mannheim. The Existentialist movement was formed out of several intellectual and artistic circles of the French capital and derived its name from the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. The historical sources to the Existentialists (memoires, newspaper reports, novels, plays and movies) offer a picture most ambivalent to a today’s point of view. On the one hand there is a group of Existentialists understanding themselves as purely intellectual, while on the other there is a group of young Existentialists forming the Parisian party-scene having nothing to do with the intellectual content of the equally named philosophy. But both groups were bound together by commonly shared basic intentions, which had effects beyond the generation unit and which enabled the Existentialist movement to form the spirit of its generation.