Around 1900, a series of reform movements emerge that break through the mainstream of modern, technocratic and industrial developments, and in many areas of life seek alternative possibilities and new ways. Enthusiastic, open-minded and inspired by an attitude to life that ventures ideologically, artistically and socially into hitherto unknown zones, one wants to oppose the harsh realities to a different, creative, profound and experiential reality. These diverse aspects and their interdisciplinary interweaving often remained hidden in historical retrospectives. In 2018, an exhibition in an art gallery in Budapest titled Hidden Stories - The Life Reform Movements and Art offered unique and surprising insights into the interconnectedness of people and works. In the subsequent conference of the same name, experts from science, art and culture devoted themselves to the hitherto little-known relationships between artists and individual reform movements. The resulting volume reveals and presents the international effectiveness of artists from Hungary as well as from other countries, who have shaped a changed attitude to life in the expressions of music, dance and performing arts. In artist colonies, garden centers and educational reform projects, they created specially places that allowed a changed lifestyle. There are always different ideological, religious and spiritual views in the background that are analyzed here.

Life reform and progressive education developed various utopias and projected new ways of cultural, social, religious and political living. This book studies how these utopias lived on until World War II, how they still affect present life in Austria and Hungary, and it examines continuities and differences within the political, educational and cultural movements of both countries. The main focus lies on interrelations between educational utopias and strategies and the development of a collective identity in times of radical political and social changes. Lebensreform und Reformpadagogik entwarfen Utopien fur das kulturelle, soziale und religioese Leben. Dieses Buch untersucht das Weiterleben dieser Utopien bis zum Beginn des zweiten Weltkrieges, ihre Wirkungen bis in die Gegenwart in OEsterreich und Ungarn und beleuchtet Kontinuitaten und Differenzen innerhalb der (bildungs-)politischen und kulturellen Stroemungen beider Lander. Im Zentrum steht die Frage nach Zusammenhangen zwischen padagogischen Utopien und Strategien und den Entwicklungen von kollektiver Identitat in Zeiten politischer und gesellschaftlicher Umbruche und Verunsicherungen.