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Provincializing Weimar Culture

On 25-26 April 2024, Utrecht University hosts the international conference “Provincializing Weimar Culture Global and Local Perspectives on Interwar Germany”, with support from the Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam. This conference brings together scholars advancing new approaches to the cultural history of the Weimar era. It takes its inspiration from Dipesh Chakrabarty’s call to “provincialize Europe”, in the sense of historicizing and criticizing modernity’s claims to universality to uncover its colonial heritage. In this vein, the scholars approach the subject from a transnational or postcolonial perspective and in its global context. However, the conference also employs the idea of “provincializing” in a second, more literal sense, focusing on cultural life outside of Berlin and other urban centres of Weimar Germany. These two perspectives – the global and the local – are not mutually exclusive, but rather dialectically intertwined.

More information here.

Moderate Modernity: The Newspaper Tempo and the Transformation of Weimar Democracy

Focusing on the fate of a Berlin-based newspaper during the 1920s and 1930s, Moderate Modernity: The Newspaper Tempo and the Transformation of Weimar Democracy chronicles the transformation of a vibrant and liberal society into an oppressive and authoritarian dictatorship. Tempo proclaimed itself as “Germany’s most modern newspaper” and attempted to capture the spirit of Weimar Berlin, giving a voice to a forward-looking generation that had grown up under the Weimar Republic’s new democratic order. The newspaper celebrated modern technology, spectator sports, and American consumer products, constructing an optimistic vision of Germany’s future as a liberal consumer society anchored in Western values.

Continue reading “Moderate Modernity: The Newspaper Tempo and the Transformation of Weimar Democracy”

A backlash against liberalism? Weimar’s lessons for the Trump presidency

 In the International Journal of History, Culture and Modernity (HCM), three distinguished scholars of Weimar’s sexual politics – Laurie Marhoefer, Julia Roos and Edward Ross Dickinson – discuss if the collapse of Germany’s first democracy and the rise of the Nazis can be partly explained by a “backlash” against the country’s progressive laws. They also address the question if we can learn anything for today’s politics and the apparent “backlash” against liberal identity politics, which was supposedly used by Donald Trump in his presidential campaign.

New book: The “sick” Republic

Knut Langewand’s study on metaphors of bodies and sickness in Weimar’s political discourse shows how the discussion about the health of some of Weimar’s leading statesmen undermined the legitimacy of the new Republic itself. On the basis of the cases of Stresemann, Ebert, Braun, Müller, and Brüning, the book discusses the construction of terms such as “kranker Volkskörper” and their impact on the political culture of the time.

It’s Weimar Time Again!

Berlin_Metropolis_1024x1024Over the past weeks, three new exhibitions have opened on two different continents, almost at the same time, that put Weimar culture back into the spotlight of wider public attention.
In New York, Berlin Metropolis: 1918-1933 at the Neue Galerie “explores the city using a multi-media approach, revealing this complex period through painting, drawing, sculpture, collage, photography, architecture, film, and fashion.” In LA, New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919-1933, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art claims to be “the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States to explore the dominant artistic trends of this period.” Meanwhile, in Berlin, Tanz auf dem Vulkan. Das Berlin der Zwanziger Jahre im Spiegel der Künste at the Stadtmuseum Berlin promises to deliver for the first time a “comprehensive overview” of Berlin’s status as the European centre of the avant-garde in Europe during this period. Continue reading “It’s Weimar Time Again!”

Adorno and Benjamin: Archetypes of ‘the Critic’

140915_r25456-320The New Yorker has an interesting essay on the lasting influence of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin and on the ‘modest resurgence’ the Frankfurt School is enjoying in contemporary magazines such as n+1, The Jacobin, and The Baffler: ‘Between them, Adorno and Benjamin were pioneers in thinking critically about pop culture — in taking that culture seriously as an object of scrutiny, whether in tones of delight, dismay, or passionate ambivalence. … One great contribution that they made to the art of criticism was the idea that any object, no matter how seemingly trivial, was worth a searching glance.’

Journal Review: German History, 2/2014

2.coverThe June edition of German History features an article on ‘Jazz, Synaesthesia and the History of the Senses in the Weimar Republic‘. Michael J. Schmidt argues that jazz was not primarily a musical, but a visual and textual phenomenon in Germany during 1920s: ‘Most Germans did not have access to live performances of jazz or radio and gramophones. Instead, they encountered it in newspapers and visual culture.’ Continue reading “Journal Review: German History, 2/2014”

Modernist Journals Project

mjpThe Modernist Journals Project at Brown University and the University of Tulsa has been an important digital archive since 1995, offering scans of English-language avant-garde publications from 1890 to 1922. The archive includes titles like Wyndham Lewis’ Blast, The Crisis and Scribner’s Magazine, and more will be added in the future.

CfP: History of Medicine since the Weimar Republic

The Institute for the History of Medicine in Stuttgart hosts a conference on the history of the prevention of diseases and accidents since the Weimar Republic:

Akteure, Praktiken und Instrumente. Geschichte der Prävention von Krankheiten und Unfällen seit der Weimarer Republik

Institut für Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung
16.12.2013-17.12.2013, Stuttgart
Deadline: 08.09.2013

Abstracts of 400 words should reach the organizers by 8 September 2013.

Jewish periodicals online

convert (1)The Compact Memory project has digitized 118 German-language Jewish periodicals, from Sulamith (1806-1843) to Central Verein-Zeitung (1922-1938) and Jüdische Welt-Rundschau (1939-1940). This amazing collection, financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), offers a wealth of material for scholars of German-Jewish history.

Max Pechstein biography

9783110282085This new biography of Max Pechstein includes a very insightful chapter about his life during the Weimar years: ‘Max Pechstein (1881–1955) is one of the most prominent German artists of the twentieth century, not least because of his crucial role in the breakthrough of German Expressionism. This long overdue biography combines the portrayal of an outstanding artistic personality with the story of an individual German who struggled through the political upheavals of his time. Pechstein’s work is presented in the cultural context of museum politics and art associations, art dealers and critics, market forces and cultural trends.’

Fulda, Bernhard / Soika, Aya: Max Pechstein: The Rise and Fall of Expressionism

Conference on Ullstein Company

logo1The 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