Neo-romanticism as well as Romanticism is considered in opposition to naturalism—indeed, so far as music is concerned, naturalism is regarded as alien and even hostile . In the period following German unification in 1871, naturalism rejected Romantic literature as a misleading, idealistic distortion of reality. Naturalism in turn came to be regarded as incapable of filling the "void" of modern existence. Critics such as
Hermann Bahr,
Heinrich Mann, and
Eugen Diederichs came to oppose naturalism and
materialism under the banner of "neo-romanticism", demanding a cultural reorientation responding to "the soul's longing for a meaning and content in life" that might replace the fragmentations of modern knowledge with a holistic world view . by
George Grie --> == Late 20th century ==