Torn Modernism illuminates an important moment in the history of the Kunstmuseum Basel's collection. In 1937 the Nazi cultural policy denounced thousands of works as "degenerate" and forcibly removed from German museums. The Third Reich's Ministry of Propaganda correctly assumed that a portion of such works would find buyers abroad, in this way certain artworks deemed "internationally exploitable" reached the art market via various channels. Georg Schmidt (1896-1966), the museum's director at the time, managed in 1939 to acquire the Painting Animal Destinies by Franz Marc (1880-1916) and twenty avant-garde masterpieces all at once. In the catalogue, renowned experts trace the events based on the seizures in German museums and explain the historical contexts. The actors of the institutions and the art market are presented, and the Nazi regime's act of cultural violence is revealed, which resulted in an artificial fragmentation of Modernism into art that was "exploitable" on the one hand, and art that had been destroyed or forgotten on the other. Contributions on the auction of the Galerie Fischer in Lucerne, on Georg Schmidt's approach, and on the classification of the acquisitions in the context of Basel's collection history bring specific Swiss aspects into focus.

Language and Civilization is a collocation in name, and a coalescence, above all, of words and workings in human life. The concept broadly envisions a congress of folks of many tongues and achievements, presenting a motley picture in detail, but a unified whole in humanity. The twin volumes bearing this title offer a vita activa in conspectus. Balances variety has been the guiding principle for contributors to act upon, and their response was cheerfully consentient. One hundred scholars from countries around the globe have sent in original papers; the table of names reads as does an honours list in the fields of modern languages and related studies ...Algeo, Barber, Bolinger, Bourcier, Cannon, Cottle, Finkenstaedt, Gelling, Gneuss, Hamp, Lehmann, Lehnert, Penzl, to mention but a baker's dozen. The work has been brought together in honour of Professor Otto Hietsch, a native of Vienna, who in his time occupied chairs of English and Germanic philology in the universities of Padua, Braunschweig, and Regensburg. He is a certificated interpreter and translator, amd did research or taught in universities as far apart as Paris and Canberra, as Durham and Ann Arbor. Many of the present contributors are his life-long friends, associates in office, or former students; the books written and edited by him foreshadow to a fair measure the articles gathered here for the occasion of his retirement next year.