Metropolenkonkurrenz. Die Weltausstellungen in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts 1

Abstract

Competing Metropolises. The World Expositions of the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

The article analyses the world expositions from 1851 to 1900 as representations of western modernity and focuses on three of its dimensions: The first one is crystallised in the dominance of modern machinery as symbol of the industrial era in the expositions themselves. The second concerns the rise of mass culture and mass tourism already obvious in the earliest expositions but usually attributed by researchers to an «organised modernity» of later days. And finally the negotiations over standards of the modern city are considered which were pushed forward by the intertwinement of expositions and urban development. With respect to all three dimensions the tension between the claim of universality manifest in these celebrations of western modernity and the representation of the non-western world at the world fairs is of special interest.