Matthew Wills gives a short overview over the current relevance of Weimar’s history for today’s political landscape: “The Weimar Republic has been on people’s minds with the results of the U.S. presidential election and rise of the radical right in Europe. Is there a lesson to be learned from the Weimar experience? Any answer to that question has to be grounded in the chaotic history of the republic that barely held Germany together from 1919 to 1933.”
Tag: Political History
Trump, Clinton, and Weimar Germany
Comparisons with Hitler’s rise in the Weimar Republic have been ubiquitous during the recent nomination of Donald Trump as the Republican candidate in the 2016 presidential election (see, for example, Eric Weitz‘s piece for Tablet. Jeffrey Herf has offered the best analysis of these historical comparisons).
Recently, Jill Stein, the US Green Party’s presumptive nominee, made a different sort of link to Weimar times: she suggested that it was known “for a long time ever since Nazi Germany” that putting someone like Clinton in the White House would only “fan the flames of this right-wing extremism” embodied by Trump. Continue reading “Trump, Clinton, and Weimar Germany”
New book on German Revolution
The new volume Germany 1916-23. A Revolution in Context, edited by Klaus Weinhauer, Anthony McElligott and Kirsten Heinsohn, puts the German Revolution “into a wider time frame (1916-23), and coheres around three interlinked propositions: (i) acknowledging that during its initial stage the German Revolution reflected an intense social and political challenge to state authority and its monopoly of physical violence, (ii) it was also replete with »Angst«-ridden wrangling over its longer-term meaning and direction, and (iii) was characterized by competing social movements that tried to cultivate citizenship in a new, unknown state.” Continue reading “New book on German Revolution”
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?”
Democracy after World War I
The volume Normalität und Fragilität: Demokratie nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg, edited by Adam Tooze and Tim B. Müler, looks at the changes of Western democracy after 1918. During the interwar years, the authors argue, democracy “became normal”, but at the same time was characterized by a fundamental fragility: “Modern democracy is a recent invention. It was the new political phenomenon, dynamic and characteristic of the era that followed the end of World War I. In these decades, democracy became normal, a comprehensive form of governance and daily life. The notion that it might be replaced with some other model seemed unthinkable. This development occurred simultaneously in a various societies worldwide, especially in Europe. Continue reading “Democracy after World War I”
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”
Forgotten Workers’ Protests in the Weimar Republic
In the Jahrbuch für Forschungen zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung, Axel Weipert writes about the forgotten demonstration against the workers’ council law on 13 January 1920, when 42 demonstrators died and 100 were wounded in clashes with the police. The passing of the law marked the final defeat of the council movement of the German Revolution.
Philipp Reick compares the Poor People’s Movement in New York and unemployment protests in Berlin in the 1930s.
Journal Review: German History 4/2014
In the December issue of German History, Heidi Tworek writes about the cooperation between German journalists and diplomats to raise Germany’s international profile after WWI: ‘From August 2013, a new, controversial ancillary copyright law (Leistungsschutzrecht) permitted German publishers to charge online news aggregator, such as Google for displaying article snippets. Implementation remains contested, but this is not the first time that new technology has prompted Germans to seek intellectual property rights in news. In August 1927, a German delegation successfully pushed through its compromise resolution on the legal protection of news during a Conference of Press Experts at the League of Nations. Continue reading “Journal Review: German History 4/2014”
Information on Bauhaus students?
Topper Sherwood, a member of our network, is looking for information on the political activities of Bauhaus students:
Berlin researcher is looking for help/sharing on left-wing students and their organizations at the Bauhaus in Weimar, 1918-1924. Specifically: Bruno M. Adler, Franz Singer, Margit Tery (Adler), Friedl Dicker, Erwin Ratz, Stefan Wolpe, and others. Some of these were reportedly part the Sparticist movement,and/ or the KPD. For sharing/conversation, contact: toppersherwood[at]gmail.com.
Conference: European Democracies after WWI
The conference Nach dem „Großen Krieg“. Vom Triumph zum Desaster der Demokratie 1918/19 – 1939 at the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden covered the development of European democracies after WWI– and their rapid disintegration from the end of the 1920s – in a comparative perspective. A conference report has just been published on H-Soz-Kult (in German).
New Book on the German Right in Weimar
This new Sammelband, edited by Larry Eugene Jones, introduces new research on the German Right and its impact on the political culture of the Weimar Republic. In particular, the role of organisations like the Pan-German League and the German National People’s Party, and of important personalities, like Carl Schmitt, Kuno von Westarp and Hindenburg, is explored: ‘Significant recent research on the German Right between 1918 and 1933 calls into question received narratives of Weimar political history. Continue reading “New Book on the German Right in Weimar”
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
Weimar’s Republican War Veterans
Benjamin Ziemann’s new study Contested Commemorations. Republican War Veterans and Weimar Political Culture adds to the growing literature on the strength of republican cultures of commemoration in Weimar that challenge the traditional view of the dominance of nationalist and anti-democratic political culture: ‘This innovative study of remembrance in Weimar Germany analyses how experiences and memories of the Great War were transformed along political lines after 1918. Continue reading “Weimar’s Republican War Veterans”