What does it mean to see oneself as free? And how can this freedom be attained in times of
conflict and social upheaval? In this ambitious study Moritz Föllmer explores what
twentieth-century Europeans understood by individual freedom and how they endeavoured to
achieve it. Combining cultural social and political history this book highlights the tension
between ordinary people's efforts to secure personal independence and the ambitious attempts of
thinkers and activists to embed notions of freedom in political and cultural agendas. The quest
to be a free individual was multi-faceted no single concept predominated. Men and women
articulated and pursued it against the backdrop of two world wars the expanding power of the
state the constraints of working life pre-established moral norms the growing influence of
America and uncertain futures of colonial rule. But although claims to individual freedom
could be steered and stymied they could not ultimately be suppressed.
