What was the German title of Franz Roh's 1925 book on magic realism?
Answer
Nach-Expressionismus, Magischer Realismus
Answer
Nach-Expressionismus, Magischer Realismus
Franz Roh’s 1925 book on magic realism was titled Nach-Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus: Probleme der neuesten europäischen Malerei.
Roh was a German art historian and critic interested in painting after Expressionism. In the book, he used “magic realism” to describe a renewed attention to the strange, precise and almost uncanny qualities of ordinary visible reality. His subject was primarily European painting, not the later literary movement associated with Latin American fiction.
The title is often shortened to Nach-Expressionismus: Magischer Realismus, which is why the stored answer is a fair canonical response. A common mix-up is Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, a related interwar artistic tendency but not the book’s title. The Blue Rider was an earlier German Expressionist art group, while Kunst und Gesellschaft is not Roh’s 1925 title.
Roh’s terminology was later adapted in different contexts, especially literary criticism. The magic realism of Gabriel García Márquez and other novelists therefore shares a name with Roh’s concept but does not simply reproduce his original theory of post-Expressionist painting.
Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026