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: Visual Culture
#FindingGerty
The Wiener Library’s summer exhibition showcases the remarkable work of German Jewish photographer Gerty (Gertrud) Simon, and features many of her original prints from the 1920s and 1930s. Simon was a once-prominent photographer who captured many important political and artistic figures in Weimar Berlin, including Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Liebermann and Albert Einstein. In the 1930s, as a refugee from Nazism in Britain, Simon rapidly re-established her studio, and portrayed many significant individuals there, such as Sir Kenneth Clark, Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Aneurin Bevan. Continue reading “#FindingGerty”
A new cultural history of the Weimar Republic
Sabina Becker, expert on the “New Objectivity” movement and the long-standing editor of the Jahrbuch zur Kultur und Literatur der Weimarer Republik, has published a new cultural history of the period 1928-33. Experiment Weimar presents the culture of the Weimar Republic in its manifold forms, from sport and mass culture to avant-garde theatre and modern art, seeking to explain these aspects not with the endpoint of National Socialism in mind, but with WWI as its starting point.
Bauhaus centenary programme
In 2019 Germany celebrates 100 years of Bauhaus. The centenary year is packed with events and exhibitions, including the opening of two new museums, a Bauhaus festival, and even a major TV series based on the romantic relationship between Walter Gropius and Dörte Helm.
There is a dedicated website listing all events all over Germany, from Ulm to Weimar.
Exhibition on Jazz Age fashion
The Fashion & Textile Museum in London is currently showing clothing and fashion photography from the 1920s, “a glittering display of haute couture and ready-to-wear fashion from 1919 to 1929”. According to the exhibition catalogue, “women’s clothing in the 1920s reflected dizzying social change on an unprecedented scale. From Paris and London to New York and Hollywood, the decade following the Great War offered the modern woman a completely new style of dressing.”
The exhibition programme includes Charleston dance classes and a talk by Caroline Cox about “1920s Hair & Beauty”. Continue reading “Exhibition on Jazz Age fashion”
Karl Schenker exhibition
The Museum Ludwig in Cologne is hosting an exhibition of works by Karl Schenker, one of Weimar’s most famous society photographers: “Everybody who was anybody had their portrait taken in his Berlin studio on the famous Kurfürstendamm.” Many thanks to Dorothy Price for drawing our attention to this fabulous show! Continue reading “Karl Schenker exhibition”
Pamela Hutchinson on the History of Silent Film
The journalist Pamela Hutchinson is regularly writing about the history of silent film and its stars. For her column “Silent but deadly!“, appearing fortnightly in The Guardian, she has covered Clara Bow, Lotte Reiniger, and Rudolph Valentino. She also writes for Sight&Sound and Silent London. An interesting resource for any scholars of silent cinema!
Beyond Berlin: Working-class photography in the Ruhr area
The Ruhrmuseum Essen is currently hosting an exhibition of Erich Grisar’s documentary photography from 1928-1933. Grisar is primarily known as a working-class writer and journalist, and this new show puts his photography work centre-stage for the first time. Spiegel Online features a selection of photos from the exhibition.
It’s Weimar Time Again!
Over 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!”
Research on Weimar on LISA portal
LISA, the online portal of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, offers two very interesting video series about the Weimar Republic. The lecture series Dimensionen der “Machtergreifung” – Von der Weimarer Republik zum NS-Staat features talks by esteemed German experts on the rise of the Nazis in Weimar Germany, including Stefanie Schüler-Spingorum on anti-Semitic violence 1932-34.
The 9-part documentary The New Objectivity in Dresden introduces and presents the research project of the same name, based at the Dresden State Art Collection, from its initial inception to the final exhibition.
New book on Ullstein publishing house
Ullstein was, without a doubt, one of the most important cultural and political actors in Weimar Germany. As the country’s biggest book publisher and the home of such influential publications as Vossische Zeitung, BZ am Mittag and Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, the company exerted a major influence on contemporary culture. A staunch proponent of liberal politics and the democratic system, it was viewed by many as one of the pillars of the Weimar Republic. Not surprisingly, it quickly became a target for Nazi attacks and was one of the first Jewish companies to be “Aryanized” after 1933. Continue reading “New book on Ullstein publishing house”
CfP: Weimar Photography in Context
Weimar Photography in Context: Sequentiality, Seriality, Narrativity
Wadham College, University of Oxford
25-26 March 2015
Deadline for applications: 30 October 2014
Organisers: Prof. Dr Carolin Duttlinger (Oxford), PD Dr Silke Horstkotte (Leipzig)
The Weimar Republic was a golden age of photography in Germany, producing ground breaking and innovative work whose influence continues to be seen until today. Breaking away from a pictorialist tradition of photography which tried to emulate painting in style and subject matter, photographers associated with the ‘New Objectivity’ movement (Neue Sachlichkeit) and with the Bauhaus school of ‘New Vision’ (Neues Sehen) drew on new technology, new recording strategies and new subject matters to radically redefine not just the conventions of art photography but the more general role of photography in society, its habits and conventions of viewing. Continue reading “CfP: Weimar Photography in Context”
Journal Review: German History, 2/2014
The 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”
Weimar Film and Jewish Identity
In 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.’
New Book on 1920s Avant-garde in Cologne
Dorothy Rowe has published a new study on Marta Hegemann (1894–1970) and her role in the 1920s avant-garde in Cologne:
‘What happened in 1920s Cologne ‘after Dada’? Whilst most standard accounts of Cologne Dada simply stop with Max Ernst’s departure from the city for a new life as a surrealist in Paris, this book reveals the untold stories of the Cologne avant-garde that prospered after Dada but whose legacies have been largely forgotten or neglected. Continue reading “New Book on 1920s Avant-garde in Cologne”