On BBC3, on the occasion of the foundation of the Weimar Republic in November 1918, five experts give a personal takes on the history of the Weimar Republic, including Katie Sutton on sexuality, Jochen Hung on Weimar memory and Ute Lemper on Weimar music!
Category: Gender
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.
The “Flapper Spirit” Today
Writing for the Smithonian Magazine, Linda Simon, author of Lost Girls. The Invention of the Flapper, argues that the women of the “Roaring Twenties” had a lot in common with today’s millennials: “Many young feminists embrace the flapper’s sassy, independent spirit of seeming to play at adulthood, and are perfectly comfortable referring to themselves as ‘girls’—notably, the questing young women on Lena Dunham’s TV show ‘Girls.’ Flapper styles may be relegated to costume museums, but the flapper spirit lives again after a hundred years.”
CfA Special Issue: Women’s History of the Weimar Republic
ARIADNE, the journal published by the Archive of the German Women’s Movement, is inviting contributions for a special issue on the “female history/ies of the Weimar Republic”. The editors aim to present the different female lifestyles and social realities and ask which role women played in the new state.
Proposals have to be submitted before 1 July 2017 to schibbe@addf-kassel.de.
Radio Feature on Marlene Dietrich
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Marlene Dietrich’s death, Resonance FM repeated Marlene Dietrich – Beyond Top Hat and Tails, a radio feature we posted about before. It is available to listen online until 13 May.
BBC on Rosa Luxemburg
The BBC has produced a programme on revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg, with input by historians Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, and Nadine Rossol: “Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), ‘Red Rosa’, who was born in Poland under the Russian Empire and became one of the leading revolutionaries in an age of revolution. She was jailed for agitation and for her campaign against the Great War which, she argued, pitted workers against each other for the sake of capitalism. Continue reading “BBC on Rosa Luxemburg”
Guest Post: Edward Dickinson on Weimar’s sexual politics and the “backlash thesis”
Recently, the Weimar Studies Network has hosted a discussion about Weimar’s sexual reforms and the idea of a backlash against them that undermined the Republic itself. Edward Dickinson, author of Sex, Freedom, and Power in Imperial Germany, 1880-1914, has kindly agreed to add his view to the debate, arguing for a more detailed look at the different groups that engaged in Weimar-era sexual politics.
“Was there a backlash against Weimar’s sexual politics?”
Some further reflections
The editors of the Weimar Studies Network have asked me to comment on the exchange last November between Laurie Marhoefer and Julia Roos regarding what Marhoefer called the “backlash thesis” regarding the politics of sexuality in Weimar — the idea that the Weimar Republic was sabotaged by (among other things) controversies over the politics of sexuality. Continue reading “Guest Post: Edward Dickinson on Weimar’s sexual politics and the “backlash thesis””
Guest Post: Julia Roos’ Response to Laurie Marhoefer
Laurie Marhoefer and the editors of WSN have invited me to respond to Marhoefer’s guest blog, “Was There a Backlash against Weimar’s Sexual Politics?” (posted 15 November 2015), and I am delighted about this opportunity for scholarly exchange.
Marhoefer and I disagree in our assessments of the role Weimar-era sexual reforms like the decriminalization of female prostitution in 1927 and the projected decriminalization of non-commercial male homosexuality played in the demise of the republic. In my book Weimar through the Lens of Gender: Prostitution Reform, Woman’s Emancipation, and German Democracy, 1919-1933 (University of Michigan Press, 2010), I argue that legal rights of due process and free movement granted to female sex workers in 1927 represented a fragile political compromise, and that the right-wing backlash against this compromise constituted an important facet of the destruction of Weimar democracy. Continue reading “Guest Post: Julia Roos’ Response to Laurie Marhoefer”
Guest Post: Was there a backlash against Weimar’s sexual politics?
Laurie Marhoefer, author of Sex and the Weimar Republic. German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis, has written a guest post on Weimar’s sexual politics, addressing the interesting question if Weimar’s progressive culture actually undermined its democratic system:
Was There a Backlash against Weimar’s Sexual Politics?
Laurie Marhoefer
Scholars of Weimar are nearly in agreement that the politics of sexuality helped to bring down the Republic. I term this “the backlash thesis.” It holds that Weimar-era progressivism on issues like homosexuality, reproductive control, and female prostitution incited a backlash among conservatives, and that the Nazis capitalized on that backlash by portraying themselves as the party best suited to clean up the “swamp of immorality” in which Germany supposedly wallowed. Continue reading “Guest Post: Was there a backlash against Weimar’s sexual politics?”
Sex and the Weimar Republic
In her new study Sex and the Weimar Republic. German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis, Laurie Marhoefer shows that the famed sexual tolerance of the Weimar era was “only obtained at the expense of a minority who were deemed sexually disordered. In Weimar Germany, the citizen’s right to sexual freedom came with a duty to keep sexuality private, non-commercial, and respectable. Continue reading “Sex and the Weimar Republic”
The Eintänzer: a Social Type of the Weimar Republic
The ‘New Woman’ is well known as a female (role) model and character in Weimar culture. But what about embodiments of Weimar masculinity? The traditional German image of manliness had taken a serious hit by the nation’s defeat in the war, so it is obvious that masculinity was as contentious a field as womanhood. However, there is not much research out there yet about this issue. Continue reading “The Eintänzer: a Social Type of the Weimar Republic”
Journal Review: German Studies Review 1/2015
In the current edition of German Studies Review, published in February, Maria Makela argues that the contemporary popularization of scientific knowledge about gonads and their hormonal secretions was an inspiration for much visual and literary culture produced in Germany in the 1920s: Continue reading “Journal Review: German Studies Review 1/2015”
Journal Review: German History 1/2015
In the March issue of German History, Jochen Hung writes about ‘Transformations of the “New Woman” in the late Weimar Republic‘, shedding light on ‘the struggle of many readers to accommodate new ideas about “modern” relationships between men and women at a time when traditional morals persisted in a rapidly deteriorating economic climate.’
In the reviews section, Willeke Sandler reviews the conference volume Weimar Colonialism: Discourses and Legacies of Post-Imperialism in Germany after 1918.
Journal Review: Contemporary European History
In the current edition of Contemporary European History, Marti Lybeck reviews several works on Weimar gender history, which pick up ‘on the central question of how gender contributed to the end of the Weimar Republic and the rise to power of National Socialism.’ She criticises that the books ‘still closely cluster around the traditional topics of women’s history: family, sexuality and reproduction.’
PhD grants for research on leftist politics in Weimar
The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation is funding PhD research on “the history of leftist politics in Germany beyond Social Democracy and Party Communism“. Eligible projects include:
- Syndicalism, soviet communism and Trotzkyism in interwar Germany
- Proletarian women’s movements and working-class youth movements in interwar Germany