This innovative study of remembrance in Weimar Germany analyses how experiences and memories of the Great War were transformed along political lines after 1918. Examining the symbolism, language and ...performative power of public commemoration, Benjamin Ziemann reveals how individual recollections fed into the public narrative of the experience of war. Challenging conventional wisdom that nationalist narratives dominated commemoration, this book demonstrates that Social Democrat war veterans participated in the commemoration of the war at all levels: supporting the 'no more war' movement, mourning the fallen at war memorials and demanding a politics of international solidarity. It describes how the moderate Socialist Left related the legitimacy of the Republic to their experiences in the Imperial army and acknowledged the military defeat of 1918 as a moment of liberation. This is the first comprehensive analysis of war remembrances in post-war Germany and a radical reassessment of the democratic potential of the Weimar Republic.
The German Revolution of 1918–1919 was a transformative moment in modern European history. It was both the end of the German Empire and the First World War, as well as the birth of the Weimar ...Republic, the short-lived democracy that preceded the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship. A time of great political drama, the Revolution saw unprecedented levels of mass mobilisation and political violence, including the 'Spartacist Uprising' of January 1919, the murders of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, and the violent suppression of strikes and the Munich Councils' Republic. Drawing upon the historiography of the French Revolution, Founding Weimar is the first study to place crowds and the politics of the streets at the heart of the Revolution's history. Carefully argued and meticulously researched, it will appeal to anyone with an interest in the relationship between violence, revolution, and state formation, as well as in the history of modern Germany.
Weimar thought Gordon, Peter E; McCormick, John P
2013., 20130630, 2013, 2013-06-30
eBook
During its short lifespan, the Weimar Republic (1918-33) witnessed an unprecedented flowering of achievements in many areas, including psychology, political theory, physics, philosophy, literary and ...cultural criticism, and the arts. Leading intellectuals, scholars, and critics--such as Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Martin Heidegger--emerged during this time to become the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century. Even today, the Weimar era remains a vital resource for new intellectual movements. In this incomparable collection,Weimar Thoughtpresents both the specialist and the general reader a comprehensive guide and unified portrait of the most important innovators, themes, and trends of this fascinating period.
The book is divided into four thematic sections: law, politics, and society; philosophy, theology, and science; aesthetics, literature, and film; and general cultural and social themes of the Weimar period. The volume brings together established and emerging scholars from a remarkable array of fields, and each individual essay serves as an overview for a particular discipline while offering distinctive critical engagement with relevant problems and debates.
Whether used as an introductory companion or advanced scholarly resource,Weimar Thoughtprovides insight into the rich developments behind the intellectual foundations of modernity.
This book examines the causal impact of ideology through a comparative-historical analysis of three cases of 'post-imperial democracy': the early Third Republic in France (1870–86); the Weimar ...Republic in Germany (1918–34); and post-Soviet Russia (1992–2008). Hanson argues that political ideologies are typically necessary for the mobilization of enduring, independent national party organizations in uncertain democracies. By presenting an explicit and desirable picture of the political future, successful ideologues induce individuals to embrace a long-run strategy of cooperation with other converts. When enough new converts cooperate in this way, it enables sustained collective action to defend and extend party power. Successful party ideologies thus have the character of self-fulfilling prophecies: by portraying the future polity as one organized to serve the interests of those loyal to specific ideological principles, they help to bring political organizations centered on these principles into being.
In spite of having been short-lived, “Weimar” has never lost its fascination. Until recently the Weimar Republic’s place in German history was primarily defined by its catastrophic beginning and end ...- Germany’s defeat in 1918 and the Nazi seizure of power in 1933; its history seen mainly in terms of politics and as an arena of fl awed decisions and failed compromises. However, a flourishing of interdisciplinary scholarship on Weimar political culture is uncovering arenas of conflict and change that had not been studied closely before, such as gender, body politics, masculinity, citizenship, empire and borderlands, visual culture, popular culture and consumption. This collection offers new perspectives from leading scholars in the disciplines of history, art history, film studies, and German studies on the vibrant political culture of Germany in the 1920s. From the traumatic ruptures of defeat, revolution, and collapse of the Kaiser’s state, the visionaries of Weimar went on to invent a republic, calling forth new citizens and cultural innovations that shaped the republic far beyond the realms of parliaments and political parties.
It is impossible to understand the history of modern Europe without some knowledge of the Weimar Republic. The brief fourteen-year period of democracy was marked by unstable government, economic ...crisis and the rise of extremist political movements. Yet at the same time a vibrant cultural scene flourished, which continues to influence the international art world, whether indirectly via the enduring popularity of Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Novels and Bob Fosse's Cabaret, or in more concrete ways through the aesthetics of Expressionism and the Bauhaus movement. Historians have seen the Weimar Republic as a democratic experiment set between the authoritarian monarchism of the Wilhelmine Empire and the tyranny of the Third Reich, but contemporaries were not so pessimistic. While some disparaged the new democratic system and fulminated against Weimar cosmopolitanism and 'decadence', most praised attempts to bring social improvement and the emancipation of women, or celebrated the exciting forays into the avant-garde of Weimar's artistic elite. In the fields of visual art, literature, theatre, cinema, music and architecture - not to mention chemistry, physics and psychology - Germany became a world leader during the 1920s, while her perilous political and economic position ensured that no US or European statesman could afford to ignore her. Weimar Germany was thus much more than merely a cul-de-sac off Germany's difficult 'special path' to modernity, it was a key period in German and European history whose influence continues to be felt. Incorporating original research and a synthesis of the existing historiography, this book will provide students and a general readership with a clear and concise introduction to the history of the first German Republic. It highlights key concepts and themes in the study of German history in general and the Weimar Republic in particular.
Throughout the Weimar period the so-called "masculinization of woman" was much more than merely an outsider or subcultural phenomenon; it was central to representations of the changing female ideal, ...and fed into wider debates concerning the health and fertility of the German "race" following the rupture of war. Drawing on recent developments within the history of sexuality, this book sheds new light on representations and discussions of the masculine woman within the Weimar print media from 1918-1933. It traces the connotations and controversies surrounding this figure from her rise to media prominence in the early 1920s until the beginning of the Nazi period, considering questions of race, class, sexuality, and geography. By focusing on styles, bodies and identities that did not conform to societal norms of binary gender or heterosexuality, this book contributes to our understanding of gendered lives and experiences at this pivotal juncture in German history.
Between 1914 and 1922, millions of Europeans left their homes as a result of war, postwar settlements, and revolution. After 1918, the immense movement of people across Germany's eastern border posed ...a sharp challenge to the new Weimar Republic. Ethnic Germans flooded over the border from the new Polish state, Russian émigrés poured into the German capital, and East European Jews sought protection in Germany from the upheaval in their homelands. Nor was the movement in one direction only: German Freikorps sought to found a soldiers' colony in Latvia, and a group of German socialists planned to settle in a Soviet factory town.
In The Impossible Border, Annemarie H. Sammartino explores these waves of migration and their consequences for Germany. Migration became a flashpoint for such controversies as the relative importance of ethnic and cultural belonging, the interaction of nationalism and political ideologies, and whether or not Germany could serve as a place of refuge for those seeking asylum. Sammartino shows the significance of migration for understanding the difficulties confronting the Weimar Republic and the growing appeal of political extremism.
Sammartino demonstrates that the moderation of the state in confronting migration was not merely by default, but also by design. However, the ability of a republican nation-state to control its borders became a barometer for its overall success or failure. Meanwhile, debates about migration were a forum for political extremists to develop increasingly radical understandings of the relationship between the state, its citizens, and its frontiers. The widespread conviction that the democratic republic could not control its "impossible" Eastern borders fostered the ideologies of those on the radical right who sought to resolve the issue by force and for all time.
Dragonslayer Lockenour, Jay
2021, 2021-04-15
eBook
In this fascinating biography of the infamous ideologue Erich Ludendorff, Jay Lockenour complicates the classic depiction of this German World War I hero. Erich Ludendorff created for himself a ...persona that secured his place as one of the most prominent (and despicable) Germans of the twentieth century. With boundless energy and an obsession with detail, Ludendorff ascended to power and solidified a stable, public position among Germany's most influential. Between 1914 and his death in 1937, he was a war hero, a dictator, a right- wing activist, a failed putschist, a presidential candidate, a publisher, and a would-be prophet. He guided Germany's effort in the Great War between 1916 and 1918 and, importantly, set the tone for a politics of victimhood and revenge in the postwar era. Dragonslayer explores Ludendorff's life after 1918, arguing that the strange or unhinged personal traits most historians attribute to mental collapse were, in fact, integral to Ludendorff's political strategy. Lockenour asserts that Ludendorff patterned himself, sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, on the dragonslayer of Germanic mythology, Siegfried—hero of the epic poem The Niebelungenlied and much admired by German nationalists. The symbolic power of this myth allowed Ludendorff to embody many Germans' fantasies of revenge after their defeat in 1918, keeping him relevant to political discourse despite his failure to hold high office or cultivate a mass following after World War I. Lockenour reveals the influence that Ludendorff's postwar career had on Germany's political culture and radical right during this tumultuous era. Dragonslayer is a tale as fabulist as fiction.
