Economic History – Page 2 – Weimar Studies Network

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.

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Weimar’s long shadows in Britain

In The Guardian, Jochen Hung examines the continuing use of 1920s hyperinflation by British journalists for explaining contemporary German fiscal politics: ‘German aversion to the ECB printing money isn’t about the ‘national psyche’. To understand German fiscal policy, it is necessary to look beyond the cod psychology about a fear of 1920s hyperinflation.’

Economic History of the Weimar Republic

This new book offers a concise introduction to the economic development of Weimar Germany, from the ecnomic aspects of decommissioning in 1918, to the impact of reparations and the Great Depression.

>> review (in German)

BMW from 1914-1933

The new study Die Bayerischen Motoren Werke bis 1933. Eine Unternehmensgründung in Krieg, Inflation und Weltwirtschaftskrise closes a gap in research on the history of the German motor company BMW, focusing on the company’s fate in the First World War, the inflation of the 1920s and the Great Depression.

>> review (in German)

Labour Administration in Germany

David Meskill’s new study OPTIMIZING THE GERMAN WORKFORCE. Labor Administration from Bismarck to the Economic Miracle sheds new light on ‘Arbeitspolitik’ in Germany in the 20th Century:

‘During the twentieth century, German government and industry created a highly skilled workforce as part of an ambitious program to control and develop the country’s human resources. Yet, these long-standing efforts to match as many workers as possible to skilled vocations and to establish a system of job training have received little scholarly attention, until now. The author’s account of the broad support for this program challenges the standard historical accounts that focus on disagreements over the German political-economic order and points instead to an important area of consensus. These advances are explained in terms of political policies of corporatist compromise and national security as well as industry’s evolving production strategies. By tracing the development of these policies over the course of a century, the author also suggests important continuities in Germany’s domestic politics, even across such different regimes as Imperial, Weimar, Nazi, and post-1945 West Germany.’

Social partnership in France and Germany

The comparative study Gescheiterte Sozialpartnerschaft – Gefährdete Republik? traces the development of the social partnership between trade unions, employers and state institutions in France and Germany in the interwar years. It reveals that the fierce distribution conflicts in Germany seriously undermined democracy, while the development of the welfare state was seen relatively critical in France until 1936.

European Labour Migration 1919-1974

Labour migration has changed German and European society profoundly in the 20th century. This news study looks at bilateral labour recruitment agreements and the evolution of an international labour market in Europe between 1919 and 1974 with a focus on the Weimar Republic.

Christoph Rass: Institutionalisierungsprozesse auf einem internationalen Arbeitsmarkt: Bilaterale Wanderungsverträge in Europa zwischen 1919 und 1974

Rethinking Weimar’s Political Culture

WEIMAR PUBLICS/WEIMAR SUBJECTS. Rethinking the Political Culture of Germany in the 1920s (ed. by Kathleen Canning, Kerstin Barndt, and Kristin McGuire) is a collection of ‘interdisciplinary scholarship on Weimar political culture […] uncovering arenas of conflict and change that had not been studied closely before, such as gender, body politics, masculinity, citizenship, empire and borderlands, visual culture, popular culture and consumption.’

Contributions include:

Anton Kaes: The Return of the Undead: Weimar Cinema and the Great War

Thomas Mergel: High Expectations – Deep Disappointment: Structures of the Public Perception of Politics in the Weimar Republic

Peter Fritzsche: The Economy of Experience in Weimar Germany

Kathleen Canning: Claiming Citizenship: Suffrage and Subjectivity in Germany after the First World War

>> Review (in German History, 1/2012)

Germany, 1914-1933

In his new book Germany: Politics, Society and Culture 1914-1933, Matthew Stibbe argues that the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, not the Revolution of 1918/19, was the real starting point of the Weimar Republic:

‘Germany, 1914-1933 takes a fresh and critical look at this crucial period in German history. The book suggests that previous scholars have been wrong to focus on 1918 rather than 1914 as the starting point of Germany’s descent into chaos and dictatorship and in particular will show that 1914 was a significant turning point in terms of German attitudes towards nationalism and gender and the role of violence in political life.’

Review (in English)

Cultural History of The Great Depression

Since the ‘credit crunch’ in 2008, interest in the history of Great Depression has surged, albeit mostly in its economic impact. Morris Dickstein’s book Dancing in the Dark. A Cultural History of the Great Depression takes a look at its cultural implications in the USA.

Review (in German)

German Merchant Families 1860-1930

This ‘micro study’ on merchant families in Bremen sheds some light on German everyday life between Bismarck and the Great Depression.
Wiebke Hoffmann: Auswandern und Zurückkehren. Kaufmannsfamilien zwischen Bremen und Übersee. Eine Mikrostudie 1860–1930

PR in the Weimar Republic

The official history of German public relations generally starts after 1945, when major agencies were set up and most companys built up their own corporate pr departments following US standards. This new publication (based on an MA thesis handed in at the Freie Universtät Berlin) shows that the industry had been established much earlier and that corporate pr had been firmly established already in the 1920s and 30s.

Marius Lange: Zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur. Unternehmerische Öffentlichkeitsarbeit in Deutschland 1929-1936

August Thyssen correspondence

The industrialist August Thyssen (1842-1926) was one of the most important figures of German society and economy. The correspondence between him and his youngest son Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza sheds some light on private conflict of the Thyssen family and official company policies in the Weimar Republic.

Manfred Rasch: August Thyssen und Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. Briefe einer Industriellenfamilie 1919–1926

New Book Covering the Industrial Production of Hormones 1914-1938

This new book covers the history of the research on male and female sexual hormones, and especially its boom time in the 1920s and 1930s, when their industrial production started.

Christina Ratmoko: Damit die Chemie stimmt. Die Anfänge der industriellen Herstellung von weiblichen und männlichen Sexualhormonen 1914–1938