Research on the history, culture and society of the Weimar Republic
In the Jahrbuch für Forschungen zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Axel Weipert writes about the forgotten demonstration against the workers’ council law on 13 January 1920, when 42 demonstrators died and 100 were wounded in clashes with the police. The passing of the law marked the final defeat of the council movement of the German Revolution.
Philipp Reick compares the Poor People’s Movement in New York and unemployment protests in Berlin in the 1930s.
In March, the Konzerthaus on Gendarmenmarkt is hosting Festival Mythos Berlin, a series of concerts and events celebrating 1920s Berlin. The highlight of the festival is the European premiere of Marc Blitzstein’s 1928 one-act opera Triple Sec. Die Sünde des Lord Silverside.
Unfortunately, the organisers have missed the opportunity to include the Konzerthaus’s own role in Weimar history as the backdrop of Gustaf Gründgens‘ career in the early 1930s – the subject of Klaus Mann’s infamous novel Mephisto.
A group of enthusiasts has set up an online version of 1920s Berlin in the virtual 3D world Second Life, complete with a Hotel Adlon, Eldorado club, a Red Wedding and the city’s very own group of chorus girls, the Fabulous Flaperettes. The community that frequents this online world has even run a successful donation campaign to pay for a Stolperstein monument in real-life Berlin, commemorating Rosa Bleiberg, a Jewish victim of the Holocaust. (Even virtual) Berlin ist immer eine Reise wert!
Hannah Höch is one of the most fascinating figures of Weimar Berlin, not only as an avant-garde artist, but also as a reflection of social and cultural changes. She embodied the ‘New Woman’ – the idea of the modern, rational and emancipated female, that enjoyed great popularity in Germany after 1918 – while at the same time criticizing this new image of femininity in her work.
This exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery, the first major show of her work in the UK, is a good opportunity to get acquainted with this Weimar icon.
Moritz Föllmer offers an innovative approach to 20th-century German history by reframing it via the quest for individuality:
‘Moritz Föllmer traces the history of individuality in Berlin from the late 1920s to the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. The demand to be recognised as an individual was central to metropolitan society, as were the spectres of risk, isolation and loss of agency. This was true under all five regimes of the period, through economic depression, war, occupation and reconstruction. The quest for individuality could put democracy under pressure, as in the Weimar years, and could be satisfied by a dictatorship, as was the case in the Third Reich. Continue reading “Individuality and Modernity in Berlin”
In 2013, the interest in the history of the Ullstein publishing house seems to pick up. Besides a major conference in April, an up-coming exhibition in June – as part of the Berlin-wide theme year Diversity Destroyed – will look at Ullstein’s Gleichschaltung after 1933. A dedicated website already gives a good introduction to the topic.
The exhibition is organised by Deutsches Presemuseum im Ullsteinhaus, an association of scholars, artists and journalists aiming to establish a German ‘museum of the press’ in Ullstein’s impressive former printing facility in Tempelhof, erected in 1927. A cause worth supporting!
The Institut für Buchwissenschaft at the University of Mainz is hosting a conference on the publishing company Ullstein, one of the major political, cultural and economic players in Weimar Germany:
“Der ganze Verlag ist eine Bonbonniere”. Der Ullstein-Verlag in der ersten Hälfte des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, 25-27 April 2013, Johannes-Gutenberg Universität Mainz
This year, Berlin’s ‘Long Night of Museums‘ is dedicated to the culture of the 1920s. On this biannual event, over 80 museums and cultural institutions all over the city offer late-night events with a bus shuttle service running between all venues.
Continue reading “1920s at ‘Long Night of Museums’ in Berlin”
If you are in London this weekend, make sure to visit the The Rest is Noise festival at the Southbank Centre. Saturday and Sunday are dedicated to ‘Berlin in the 20s & 30s’, featuring plays, talks, lectures, workshops and films, including a rare production of Brecht and Weill’s Songspiel. The Guardian has more info.
Resonance FM, a London-based radio station, has produced a great feature on Marlene Dietrich and her role in gay culture, with much material from the 1920s and 30s. Featuring – among others – art historian Simon Watney and activist Terry Sanderson:
Marlene Dietrich – Beyond Top Hat and Tails
Thanks to Sabine Schereck.
Tomorrow, the Berlin Film Festival opens its doors and Weimar cinema will again play a central role in its programme. This year’s Retrospective section, curated in cooperation with New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), is dedicated to the ‘Weimar Touch’, the international influence of Weimar film after 1933 on such celebrated films like Casablanca, Hangmen Also Die! and Some Like It Hot. Continue reading “Weimar Cinema at Berlinale”
To mark the 80th anniversary of the Nazis’ rise to power (and the end of the Weimar Republic), Berlin hosts a theme year called “Diversity Destroyed“, commemorating ‘the historical diversity that was destroyed by the National Socialist regime in the knowledge that openness, tolerance and pluralism are values which our society must both protect and consciously engage with time and again.’ Continue reading “Remembering 1933”
Brendan Nash runs an interesting blog ‘exploring the entertainment of the Weimar era’, covering topics like the 1920s roots of David Bowie’s famed Dschungel on Berlin’s Nürnberger Strasse or the history of the Titania-Palast, Weimar Berlin’s grandest cinema. He also organises walking tours ‘through the Schöneberg of the late 1920s as seen by Christopher Isherwood’.
In the current issue of German Life and Letters, Kristen M. Hylenski analyses Valeska Gert’s four autobiographical texts, Mein Weg (1931), Die Bettlerbar von New York (1950), Ich bin eine Hexe (1968), and Katze von Kampen (1973), revealing ‘the ways in which Gert revisits and revises her life story. While each text recycles material from the previous ones, Gert continually reframes her narrative according to the changing audiences and historical contexts. Continue reading “Journal review: German Life & Letters, 1/2013”
Fun fact of Weimar history (making): Dame Judi Dench played Sally Bowles in the original West End production of Cabaret at the Palace Theatre, London, 27th February 1968, which had a significant influence on the popular image of Weimar Berlin.
