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Weimar as Symbol for Crisis

In this article in Der Spiegel, Wolfgang Münchau, associate editor of the Financial Times, compares the situation after the general election in Greece with Weimar Germany in 1930. Paul Krugman echoed Münchau’s comments in the New York Times a while later. Since 2008, Weimar has been a staple in the analysis of the financial crisis, as a symbol for political and economic crises and a touchstone for commentators of all camps.

 

Bauhaus Online

The Bauhaus Archive Berlin, the Weimar Classic Foundation and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation have created an online resource ‘for Bauhaus connoisseurs and enthusiasts’, offering a detailed (and appropriately well-presented) historical reference book, a magazine about the current impact of the famous design school and a calendar of Bauhaus-related events in Europe.

German History in Documents and Images

German History in Documents and Images (GHDI) is a comprehensive collection of primary source material documenting Germany’s political, social, and cultural history from 1500 to the present, created by the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. in cooperation with the Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, and IEG-MAPS (Institute for European History, Mainz). It comprises original German texts, all of which are accompanied by new English translations, and a wide range of visual imagery, including maps.

The section on Weimar Germany has been curated by Eric Weitz and Eric Roubinek and is divided into 14 categories, including Politics, Economics and Society, Architecture and Urban Life and Bodies and Sex. Featured documents include the Stinnes-Legien Agreement of 1918, Walter Gropius’ Program of the State Bauhaus in Weimar (1919), data on regional secondary school enrollment (1911, 1926/27, and 1938) and George Grosz’s painting ‘Pillars of Society’ (1926).

Journal Review: German History, 30 (2012)

In the current volume of German History, Julia Roos explores the propaganda campaign against the French occupation of the Rhineland:

‘During the early 1920s, an average of 25,000 colonial soldiers from North Africa, Senegal and Madagascar formed part of the French army of occupation in the Rhineland. The campaign against these troops, which used the racist epithet “black horror on the Rhine” (schwarze Schmach am Rhein), was one of the most important propaganda efforts of the Weimar period. Continue reading “Journal Review: German History, 30 (2012)”

CfP: The Ullstein company, 1900-1950

25 – 27 April 2013, at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz

In the first half of the 20th century, but especially during the 1920s, the publisher Ullstein occupied a central role in German print media. With its innovative business methods, modern printing technology and American-style advertising methods, Ullstein became a dominant force in German culture.

The conference “Der ganze Verlag ist einfach eine Bonbonniere.” Der Ullstein Verlag in der ersten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts aims to bring together research on inividual Ullstein publications, significant journalists, editors, authors and publicists working for the company, and its wide social, cultural, political and economic role in history.

Proposals for papers of thirty minutes are invited on any of the above-mentioned topics. Proposals should be no longer than 3,500 characters long.

Offers of papers should be sent by 30 May 2012 to David Oels (oels[at]uni‐mainz.de) or Ute Schneider (uschneid[at]uni‐mainz.de)

New Research on the ‘New Woman’

The ‘New Woman’ belongs to the most popular topics in Weimar research and the new volume City Girls. Bubiköpfe & Blaustrümpfe in den 1920er Jahren attests to her continuing fascination. There are many articles here on the figure of the ‘Neue Frau’ in literature, but also on the role of female smoking, the German reception of Hollywood stars Clara Bow and Coleen Moore, and on dancer Valeska Gert.

>> contents page

The Politics of Consumption in Weimar

In recent years, the political and social role of the consumer has taken centre stage in historical research. Claudius Torp’s new study on Consumption and Politics in the Weimar Republic builds on this trend by shedding new light on the role of ‘Konsumvereine’ (consumer cooperatives) and the changing patterns of consumption in the first German democracy.

>> review (in German)

CfP: Nationalist Economy. Racism and Economy 1918-1939

Nationalist Economy. On the introduction of racist parameters in economies in Europe between the wars 1918-1939

When Werner Sombart published his study “Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben” 100 years ago, he paved the way for an anti-Semitic tendency towards viewing Jews as a distinct, peculiar group within the German economy. A short time later, with the outbreak of the First World War, the liberal global economic system which was based on principles of free trade and most favoured nation treatment and negotiated in gold parities finally collapsed. In its place, economic regimes were installed in Europe which not only jealously guarded their borders by means of customs duties and currency and transfer restrictions but also increasingly sought to reserve trade, industry and agriculture for certain sections of the population, defined by their social or ethnic identity.

Continue reading “CfP: Nationalist Economy. Racism and Economy 1918-1939”

Cultural History of WWI in France and Germany

No. 54 of the Historische Zeitung‘s Beihefte series takes a comparative look at the political consequences and literary interpretations of Burgfrieden and Union sacrée after the war. Contributions include a juxtaposition of French republican and German völkisch nationalism by Manfred Kittel, and a study on the use of literary sources in historical research by Nicolaus Beaupré. David Midgley adds a British perspective.

Wolfram Pyta, Carsten Kretschmann (eds.): Burgfrieden und Union sacrée. Literarische Deutungen und politische Ordnungsvorstellungen in Deutschland und Frankreich 1914-1933

>> review (in German)

German-Jewish Soldiers of the First World War

Tim Grady’s new study on German-Jewish Soldiers of the First World War in History and Memory charts the development of remembrance of Jewish soldiers fighting for Germany in WWI from the Weimar Republic to post-WWII Germany:

‘By examining Germany’s complex and continually evolving memory culture, this book opens up a new approach to the study of both German and German-Jewish history. In doing so, it draws out a narrative of entangled and overlapping relations between Jews and non-Jews during the short twentieth century. The Jewish / non-Jewish relationship, the book argues, did not end on the battlefields of the First World War, but ran much deeper to extend through into the era of the Cold War.’

>> review

Prostitution in German History

Victory Harris’ new study Selling Sex in the Reich. Prostitutes in German Society, 1914-1945 focuses on the the voices and experiences of the prostitutes themselves and identifies a remarkable consistency in the development of public attitudes to prostitution, from Wilhelmine Germany, through the Weimar years and into the Third Reich:

Selling Sex in the Reich focuses on the voices and experiences of prostitutes working in the German sex trade in the first half of the twentieth century. Victoria Harris develops a nuanced picture of the prostitutes’ backgrounds, their reasons for entering the trade, and their attitudes towards their work and those who sought to control them, as well as of their clients and the wide variety of other players within the wider prostitute milieu. Public responses to the issue of prostitution are revealed through the motivations of the law enforcement agencies, social workers, and doctors who increasingly attempted to manage and contain prostitutes’ movements and behaviour and to scientifically categorize them as a group. Continue reading “Prostitution in German History”

Women in Weimar Fashion

Mila Ganeva’s new study Women in Weimar Fashion. Discourses & Displays in German Culture, 1918-1933 sheds new light on the role of fashion in the construction of female modernity:

‘In the Weimar Republic, fashion was not only manipulated by the various mass media – film, magazines, advertising, photography, and popular literature – but also emerged as a powerful medium for women’s self-expression. Female writers and journalists, including Helen Grund, Irmgard Keun, Vicki Baum, Elsa Maria Bug, and numerous others engaged in a challenging, self-reflective commentary on current styles. By regularly publishing on these topics in the illustrated press and popular literature, they transformed traditional genres and carved out significant public space for themselves. This book re-evaluates paradigmatic concepts of German modernism such as the flâneur, the Feuilleton, and Neue Sachlichkeit in the light of primary material unearthed in archival research: fashion vignettes, essays, short stories, travelogues, novels, films, documentaries, newsreels, and photographs. Unlike other studies of Weimar culture that have ignored the crucial role of fashion, the book proposes a new genealogy of women’s modernity by focusing on the discourse and practice of Weimar fashion, in which the women were transformed from objects of male voyeurism into subjects with complex, ambivalent, and constantly shifting experiences of metropolitan modernity.’