They were the first German artistic group in decades to manifest a freedom of investigation with international relevance, recognized as an equal by the cultural avant-garde of several countries, pursuing real artistic experiments of their time. By contrast, the German cultural landscape of then was characterized by a total cultural void and by "the dullest conformism, in which the artists and intellectuals being honored were only retarded and timid imitators of imported, old ideas." For this, and possibly other criticisms, the Spur journal was subject to police and judicial prosecutions, and was convicted "in the name of moral order", in order to make the Spur group, and all those who wish to pursue the same route, succumb to the ambient conformism.