[Not Available].

Abstract

The slogan of an increase in external stimuli is seen as a characteristic of the diverse processes of modernization in the German Empire. A study of Theodor Lessing's "Anti-noise Society" (1908-1914) showed how the individual experienced auditory stimuli andd how these stimuli were understood and digested. Apart from the writings of Lessing, the Society's mouthpiece "Anti-rowdy. The Right to Quietness" was analysed hermeneutically and with respect to questions of social history. The combination of this analysis with the relevant medical results and discussions in specialist literature (question of nervousness; occupational medicine) have shown that the use of an expression like "increase in stimuli" is justified when urban life before World War I is to be characterised. It is, however, only an abstract collective term under which diverse forms of practical knowledge, different ways of giving meaning to this psychosocial phenomenon, and even willful disregard for it as a relevant contemporary issue are subsumed - just as with noise as an environmental problem.