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.
Tag: Political History
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.
Provincial politics in a new light
Over the last few years, research on Weimar Germany has finally moved away from its obsession with Berlin and has focused more on Germany’s federal nature and its regional centres. The study Der Badische Landtag 1918-1933 is a timely and important contribution to this new current. It shows that, while the Weimar Republic was dogged frequently by civil unrest and weak parliaments on a national level, democracy and parliamentarianism enjoyed high popularity in the south-western state of Baden.
The 1923 Communist Revolt reconsidered
The study “Wenn Hamburg brennt, brennt die Welt.” Der kommunistische Griff nach der Macht im Oktober 1923 sheds new light on the Communist uprising in Hamburg, a short-lived revolt whose effectiveness and impact is still hotly debated today. Joachim Paschen has consulted new sources to paint the picture of a carefully planned and vigorously executed rebellion that changed the political landscape of the Weimar Republic.
Utopian theories of state in Austria
In the new book Staatsfiktionen. Denkbilder moderner Staatlichkeit, Marion Löffler analyzes the utopian elements in political sciences in Austria from 1918-1939. The volume is published by the research centre Tropen des Staates at Vienna University, a project focusing on Austrian political philosophy and theories of state during the interwar years.
Anyone interested in reviewing this volume should contact Katharina Fischer (katharina.fischer[at]facultas.at).
Journal Review: Historical Social Research 2/2011
Cornelie Usborne, expert on abortion and gender politics in the Weimar Republic, has published an article on ‘Social Body, Racial Body, Woman’s Body. Discourses, Policies, Practices from Wilhelmine to Nazi Germany, 1912-1945’ in the current issue of Historical Social Research.
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
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.’
Special CEH Issue on Weimar
The December issue of Central European History is dedicated to the history of the Weimar Republic, with articles by Eric Weitz, Kathleen Canning, Rüdiger Graf and Nadine Rossol:
Kathleen Canning: The Politics of Symbols, Semantics, and Sentiments in the Weimar Republic
Eric D. Weitz: Weimar Germany and its Histories
Rüdiger Graf: Either-Or: The Narrative of “Crisis” in Weimar Germany and in Historiography
Nadine Rossol: Performing the Nation: Sports, Spectacles, and Aesthetics in Germany, 1926–1936
Eric Bryden: Heroes and Martyrs of the Republic: Reichsbanner Geschichtspolitik in Weimar Germany
Manuela Achilles: With a Passion for Reason: Celebrating the Constitution in Weimar Germany
Study on Weimar State Representation
Nadine Rossol’s study Performing the Nation in Interwar Germany. Sport, Spectacle and Political Symbolism, 1926-36 shows that Weimar’s political culture and especially its state representation in mass events and sports meetings wasn’t as weak as normally thought:
‘Performing the Nation in Interwar Germany challenges the notion that the Nazis invented the use of aesthetics for the staging of their mass events. Instead, the book argues that the period from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s can be considered as a whole in regards to the development of political aesthetics and festive culture. “Nazi aesthetics” were less quintessentially “Nazi” but expressed the Zeitgeist of the 1920s and 1930s.’
History of the Prussian Cultural Ministry
Prussia has always been portrayed as a military state, this new book finally sheds some light on her cultural administration and policies regarding education, health services, science, religion and the arts, with much hitherto unpublished primary material.
German Conservatism 1912-1933
This new book deals with the history of the conservative parties in Germany, with a special focus on the German National People’s Party (DNVP).
Book on ‘völkische’ ideology
The ‘völki
sche’ ideology experienced a surge after the formation of the Reich in 1871 and exerted an important influence on Weimar politics.
The book Die Völkischen in Deutschland. Kaiserreich und Weimarer Republik by Stefan Breuer, published in 2008, is already in its second edition and gives a good overview over ‘völkische’ tought in Germany.