The Humboldt University Berlin, the Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam and the Topography of Terror museum are hosting a lecture series on the legacy of the Weimar Republic in German culture. Speakers include Sebastian Ullrich, Andreas Wirsching and Peter C. Caldwell.
Conf: The German Revolution
On 9-10 November, the University of Oxford hosts the conference Make Revolution Great Again, exploring the social and intellectual context and legacy of the German Revolution.
The conference “seeks to re-examine the reception of the Revolution, as well as the Weimar Republic and the interwar period, across a range of disciplines, including but not limited to European history, intellectual history, political theory, and political science.
Exhibition of Revolutionary Posters in Berlin
To commemorate the centenary of the German Revolution, the Staatsbibliothek Berlin has opened its archive of flyers, posters and special newspaper editions from November 1918 to the “Kapp-Putsch” in 1920.
The exhibition Druckerschwärze Roter Stern: Revolution an der Litfaßsäule focuses on five topics: the revolution in Berlin from November 1918 to January 1919, the revolution in Braunschweig in November 1918, the elections to the constitutional assembly in January 1919, the Munich Soviet Republic in April 1919, and the Kapp-Lüttwitz coup in March 1920.
The exhibition runs from 9 November – 15 December and is opened on 8 November with a lecture by Mark Will Jones, author of Founding Weimar: Violence and the German Revolution of 1918-19.
What can Germans learn from Weimar?
“Monitor”, Germany’s flagship investigative news programme, recently broadcast a segment about the “lessons of Weimar”: “Babylon Berlin. Die ARD-Serie über die Weimarer Republik – vier Jahre bevor die Nazis die Macht übernehmen. Deutschland 1929: Straßenkämpfe gegen die verhasste Republik und eine neue Partei vor ihrem Aufstieg an die Macht. Deutschland 2018: Rechtsextremisten demonstrieren neue Stärke. Und wieder träumt eine nationalistische Partei von der Machtübernahme. Was sollten wir aus Weimar lernen?”
New Book: Allemagne, 1917-1923
Adding to the recent “rediscovery” of the German Revolution, the volume Allemagne 1917-1923. Le difficile passage de l’Empire à la république adds a French perspective to the founding years of the Weimar Republic.
The contributions approach the topic by covering the responses by intellectuals such as Ernst Troeltsch and Max Weber, radical feminists and artists like Ernst Toller.
Exhibition: Magic Realism, 1919-33
If you find yourself in London over the next few months, make sure to visit the free exhibition MAGIC REALISM: ART IN WEIMAR GERMANY 1919-33 at the Tate Modern. The exhibition draws on paintings from The George Economou Collection and many of the artworks not ordinarily on public display. The Guardian calls it “a truly revelatory voyage through art and history”.
New Book: Weimar-era students write about the German Revolution
Nadine Rossol has unearthed a treasure trove of student essays written between late November and early December 1918 and addressing their experiences of living through the end of WWI, the revolution and the collapse of the monarchy in Essen.
Kartoffeln, Frost und Spartakus. Weltkriegsende und Revolution 1918/19 in Essener Schüleraufsätzen is a collection of 35 of these essays, with comments and context. It provides a fascinating insight into young people’s view of the beginning of the Weimar Republic and a welcome contribution to the recent “rediscovery” of the German Revolution.
The media’s Weimar moment?
In 2016, before Trump was even sworn in as President, the Columbia Journalism Review compared the rise of “fake news” and the loss of conventional media’s authority to Weimar Germany. While the article is laced with stereotypical images of Weimar’s supposedly “decadent atmosphere”, there are some interesting insights: “The instruments of democracy were appropriated by anti-democratic forces and used to undermine the democratic institutions that had made them available.”
CfP: Democratic Personalities of the Weimar Republic
The Forschungsstelle Weimarer Republik in Jena is hosting its 3rd conference of early career researchers on the topic of Democratic Personalities of the Weimar Republic.
The Weimar Republic has long been considered a republic without republicans, a democracy without democrats. This view is increasingly being challenged by recent research. For a long time, anti-democratic institutions, actors and ways of thinking had been the focus of research, and this naturally obscured the fact that at all levels and in all areas of society there were also people who actively supported the republic. These people, often forgotten today, the context of their actions, their successes and setbacks will be examined in more detail at this year’s conference.
Please submit a short abstract (up to about 5000 characters, including spaces) and a short resume. Travel expenses and accommodation are covered by the Forschungsstelle Weimarer Republic.
Rare audio material of Weimar parliamentary debates
Public broadcaster SWR has digitized debates in the Reichstag which had been recorded by the Berliner Rundfunk between 1931 and 1933, from budget debates to discussions about unemployment and Hitler’s speech after the burning of the Reichstag. The material runs 24 hours in total and documents the deteriorating political culture in the German parliament.
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 “House of the Weimar Republic”
The German government has pledged three million Euros for the building of a “House of the Weimar Republic“. The planned “national memorial site” will be located in Weimar’s city centre, close to the Goethe-Schiller monument, and is due to open for the centennial of the declaration of the Republic in 2019.
Prizes for Weimar Research
The Forschungsstelle Weimarer Republik at the University of Jena has awarded its annual prizes for research on the history of the Weimar Republic. The awardee are: Continue reading “Prizes for Weimar Research”
Daily Life in Berlin, 1925
Two years before Walther Ruttmann’s Berlin. The Symphony of the City (1927), Ufa published The City of the Millions. A Life Picture of Berlin by Adolf Trotz. The film documents life in Berlin in the mid-1920s, taking the viewer on a tour of the city, from fashionable shopping streets such as the Friedrichstrasse and the Kurfürstendamm to the film studios in Tempelhof and Babelsberg and petit-bourgeois quarters of the city. Continue reading “Daily Life in Berlin, 1925”
Moka Efti returns
With the recent success of the TV series Babylon Berlin, the famous Moka Efti café has been in the news again, nearly 90 years after its opening in 1929. The Guardian recently reported on the real-life inspiration for the “sinful superclub” of the same name that plays a central role in Babylon Berlin: “The decor inside the original venue, however, was even wilder than the imagination of the TV producers has allowed. An elevator took visitors from street level to the first floor – a technical invention so new and laden with the promise of social mobility at the time that many Berliners visited Moka Efti merely for the ride” – which echoes Siegfried Kracauer’s (overly cynical) report on the opening of the café: Continue reading “Moka Efti returns”