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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.

Weimar Film and Jewish Identity

9780230341364In reading popular films of the Weimar Republic as candid commentaries on Jewish acculturation, Ofer Ashkenazi’s Weimar Film and Modern Jewish Identity ‘provides an alternative context for a re-evaluation of the infamous “German-Jewish symbiosis” before the rise of Nazism, as well as a new framework for the understanding of the German “national” film in the years leading to Hitler’s regime.’

–> Review (in German)

European Film Gateway

efg_logoThe European Film Gateway is a single access point to films, images and texts from selected collections of 24 film archives across Europe: ‘The EFG Portal gives you quick access to hundreds of thousands of film historical documents as preserved in European film archives and cinémathèques: photos, posters, programmes, periodicals, censorship documents, rare feature and documentary films, newsreels and other materials.’

1920s Berlin in London

meow-meow1-credit-karl-giant-LST075625If 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.

Weimar Cinema at Berlinale

220px-Berlinale.svgTomorrow, 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”

Student Dissertation on Reinert’s ‘Nerven’

Sabine Grimshaw, a student of history at the University of Sheffield and one of the members of the WSN, has written a very interesting dissertation on Robert Reinert’s 1919 film Nerven. She focuses on the themes of trauma, gender and revolution in the postwar period and analyses how Nerven presents each of these themes. She has kindly offered to share her thesis with anyone interested in the topic. Please contact her at sabine.stephanie[at]hotmail.co.uk.

Gender and the State in Weimar Germany and Austria

For the whole of its existence, Weimar democracy was a contentious and hotly debated topic:  which form should the new state take exactly? The volume Staat in Unordnung? Geschlechterperspektiven auf Deutschland und Österreich zwischen den Weltkriegen sheds some light on the contemporary debate in Germany and Austria, with a focus on the aspect of gender. In these countries, the profoundly changed image of the role of women in society after the Great War was often related to the establishment of a democratic regime, so this study promises some important insights for this field of study.

The volume has been edited by Stefan Krammer, Marion Löffler and Martin Weidinger, all based at the University of Vienna’s research centre ‘Tropen des Staates‘.

>> review (in German)

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).

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

Weimar at the Berlinale

The Berinale Film Festival rolls out the red carpet today and Weimar cinema takes centre stage: this year’s Retrospektive part of the festival is dedicated to Mezhrabpom, the Russian-German film studio dubbed ‘The Red Dream Factory’.

On 12 February, the Filmstudio Babelsberg, where most of the great works of Weimar cinema like Metropolis or Der blaue Engel were produced, will celebrate its centenary with a special programme at the Berlinale. German media are already gearing up to the 100-year anniversary with various features on Babelsberg’s history:

Babelsberg-Diva Asta Nielsen: Deutschlans erster Superstar (Der Spiegel)

Hollywood in Brandenburg: 100 Jahre Babelsberg (Financial Times Deutschland)

Film ab! Ein Streifzug durch Babelsberg – und 100 Jahre Film (Deutschlandradio)

Studio Babelsberg: Die Illusionsmaschine (Berliner Zeitung)