Customer Reviews

Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Weimar Germany (i.e., the period between the two wars) is usually primarily seen merely as a precursor to the Nazi era which was to follow. This is a shame because Weimar itself is an extremely interesting period well meriting extensive study on its own. This excellent study, by a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, demonstrates the virtue of taking a close look at this fascinating period.

Most books on Weimar tend to focus on the political developments that led to Hitler's rise; while that is covered in this book as well (the initial chapters focus upon the aborted German revolution and the "political worlds"), it is clearly secondary to other concerns of the author. He sees Weimar as fundamentally being about trying to cope with "modernism" and all of the technological changes that swept life in the 1920's and 1930's. So there is sustained discussion of the mass printed media, radio, theater and film, architecture, photography (Sander and Moholy-Nagy), music and expressionist art as well as political developments and the impact of economic crises on German life. Culture and the "mass society" is a constant focus here, including some interesting capsule discussions of individuals such as Thomas Mann, Bertold Brecht, Kurt Weill, Martin Heidegger, and an absolutely fascinating figure of whom I had not previously been aware, the artist Hannah Hoch. "Bodies and Sex" is another interesting topic which I have not encountered in other studies of Weimar.

All of this is discussed against the political background which is so critical to understanding the period. As such, the book is a richer study with wider sweep than Peter Gay's stupendous "Weimar Culture," which it complements nicely. The book contains extremely helpful notes, a useful bibliographic essay, and a number of incisive illustrations, many in full color. The author begins his book stating: "Weimar Germany still speaks to us." This fine study validates that perspective.

The theme of this book is that the shattering of the structure of Imperial Germany led to an explosion of innovation and creativity, an optimism that it was possible to create a better and freer world; but that the unbroken old elites in business, the churches, the judiciary and the army hated all these changes, blamed them on the Republic and consistently undermined it where they could. The rhetoric of the conservative Right was widespread long before the Nazis became significant, that indeed `the Nazis invented nothing ideologically or rhetorically'. The crisis of the Depression and the inability of the Reichstag to deal with it brought the conservative and the radical Right together. And although Weitz says a few times at the end that there was nothing inevitable about Hitler coming to power, that it was `the result of a small group of powerful men around the president who schemed to place Adolf Hitler in power', the impression left by the book as a whole is that the tensions inside the Weimar Republic between progress and reaction, tradition and modernity, was so intense that the Republic was doomed almost from the start. One baleful symptom was the militarization of the parties on the left and the right, always ready to march in demonstrations.

The two outside chapters are political. The opening chapter is good on analysis but amazingly sketchy in parts of the narrative: the Spartacist Revolt of 1919 receives the briefest of mentions; the upheavals in Bavaria (1918/1919) none at all; the Beer Hall Putsch and the Communist rebellions in Saxony and Thuringia (1923) are dismissed in two sentences (p.102): `Communists attempted a revolution; the Nazis attempted a march on Berlin to seize power. Both were fiascos.' The concluding chapter is a better narrative account of the death-throes of the Weimar Republic, although I think that Weitz is unduly harsh on Chancellor Brüning, who, he says, `happily deployed' Article 84 of the Constitution which enabled him to govern by emergency decree, because he `wanted to use his office to overthrow the Republic and create some kind of authoritarian political system.' With the Reichstag unable to agree on any measures to deal with the economic crisis, what else could he have done? Of course Brüning wanted a reform of the Constitution, but that is not the same as wanting to overthrow the Republic, and he was after all overthrown because he banned the SA and the SS when Schleicher and Papen wanted to negotiate with the Nazis.

The seven chapters in the middle deal with the social and cultural history of the period. The social history is well done. The role of women - the hardships they suffered during the three great crises (post-war hunger, inflation, and depression) but also their liberation is frequently underlined. The impact of radio, cinema, the gramophone and photography are described in great detail (though those chapters would have applied to most countries in Western Europe and the Soviet Union. The popularity of the Tiller Girls in Germany disturbed the journalist Siegfried Kracauer: `they joined together his two nightmare visions: Prussian militarism and the American factory'. No mention that the Tiller Girls originated in England.) The sexual liberation, though also not confined to Germany, was perhaps greater in Germany - or rather, in Berlin - than it was in other countries, and the cult of nudity and the Body Beautiful was also more pronounced in Germany than elsewhere. The conservative forces, especially the churches, hated all that and blamed the Republic.

The chapters devoted to the arts consist of sometimes rather long essays devoted to a handful of individuals whom Weitz considers representative of the wish to break completely with the traditions of the past. In architecture they are Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus, Erich Mendelsohn, and Bruno Taut; in the theatre Berthold Brecht, also breaking with the traditional forms of theatre and opera. In painting there is Hannah Höch's Dadaism: her collages represent `the cacophony of modern life' and her provocatively trans-gender and trans-racial images predictably caused outrage among conservatives; but there is very little on German expressionist artists apart from the comment that they expressed both the jagged anxiety of the period and also its frenetic joy. There are no examples given of the Neue Sachlichkeit, though the school is referred to. Only in literature is more attention given to conservatives: Thomas Mann is shown as nostalgic about the culture which existed before the age of the masses; Martin Heidegger as expressing his distaste for modernism, technology, the mass culture that stifled authenticity, and the frantic life of the cities by isolating himself in his hut in the forest. Oswald Spengler and Ernst Jünger are shown as using a vocabulary which the Nazis picked up.

I think the book is excessively repetitive, but it does bring out well that life in the Weimar Republic was more fractured and more damaged by the three monumental crises in its short life than were other societies in the West. But I think that, like so many other historians of the Weimar period, Weitz is in danger of reading history backwards from the Nazi period. Perhaps the judgment in 1926 of an outsider, a Harvard specialist on Germany called Kuno Francke, was superficial: `Germany is running with a smoothness as if it has been used to republican government for generations'. Not much awareness of a fractured society there!

The rise of the hyper-specialized academic, overbred for success (read tenure) in a clubby, overpoliticized hothouse (read department of history), deprives educated general readers of first class yet accessible works of the caliber their parents or grandparents enjoyed. The days when Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (Harvard) or Richard Hofstadter (Columbia) commanded substantial readerships are long gone. There are exceptions, of course, and a number of fine writers outside the academy have stepped forward partially to bridge that gap. Occasionally an academic publisher seeks consciously to marry cutting-edge scholarship to engaging, accessible prose. Princeton University Press aims high with its lavishly illustrated presentation (including one of the most beautiful covers ever to adorn a historical monograph) of Eric D. Weitz's Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy. Unfortunately, the text itself is something of a mixed bag.

At least one of the other reviews here suggests that Weitz offers little that one could not find elsewhere, including the first volume of Richard Evans's Third Reich trilogy. This is correct, at least with regard to Weimar politics, but not in my view necessarily objectionable. Plainly Weitz aims here at an introduction for readers new to the subject. And Weitz covers far more than Weimar politics. The problems here, and the book's real strengths partially offset them, pertain to Weitz's pedestrian and at times repetitive prose, and to his selective assignment of blame for the Weimar Republic's political demise. One is sorely tempted to trace both deficiencies back to Weitz's abode in the academic hothouse.

First, though, the book does a number of things well enough. Chapter length summaries introduce us to significant developments in architecture and housing design; in literature and theater; to conflicts over new, modern ideals regarding bodies, sex, and women's role in society. For many readers, the concise precis of Bruno Taut's housing projects (a boon to German workers who now would enjoy modern utilities plus windows open to the sun and greenery--but in other aspects designed "the way people should live, whether they liked it or not"), or Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, or Billy Wilder's Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday) will amply justify their investment of time and energy in this book.

But modernism, Weimar Germany's oversized contributions notwithstanding, was not a uniquely German phenomenon. Those who seek in these pages an explanation of what made Weimar unique may not leave fully satisfied. Weitz asserts that during the 1920s and early 1930s, Weimar was the situs of an especially vibrant kinetic energy, one that pulsed more intensely because Germany had lost the First World War. Having experienced a greater sense of postwar disillusion, Weitz writes, Germans experienced a more acute effort by "artists, writers, and political organizers... to unravel the meaning of modernity." This may very well be correct, but Weitz does not really prove it. Possibly doing so would require a different book, one that embraced a more comparative approach.

Weitz's inclusion of "political organizers" among the great modernists brings us to the nub of his analysis. As Weitz shows, the harsh traditionalist reaction to modernist cultural advance was only one front of a broader indictment of perceived "un-Germanic" elements in the extant culture, government, and populace. Words like nomadic, uprooted, and Bolshevist were flung with equal fervor at the Bauhaus, the republic and the Jew. Well before Hitler assumed the Chancellorship, Weitz writes, "the attack on the modernists became entwined with ever-growing race thinking."

But Weitz attributes Weimar's demise exclusively (or nearly so; he can be a bit clever on this point) to a determined political effort by the nationalist political Right, which ever considered the republic an alien imposition upon the German Reich. The problem here is that the German Communist party also denied Weimar's legitimacy, also sought violently to overthrow it, and also contributed significantly to its demise.

Weitz's response, enunciated briefly at several points in his text, is that the Communists were never strong enough to overturn Weimar democracy while right-wing nationalist parties culminating in the Nazi movement were. This is true of course, but the better question is whether Weimar might have survived had its Communist foes instead lent their support to German democracy. Flanked on either end of the political spectrum by revolutionary, anti-democratic parties, the democrats never quite commanded majority support, and they proved that much weaker when the final showdown came. In that sense, extreme nationalists and communists alike were responsible for Weimar's demise.

Among the Weimar Republic's real and ultimately fatal weaknesses was that its army, civil service, and judiciary all substantially accepted the right-wing nationalist charge of republican illegitimacy. Weitz repeatedly blames the democrats for failing fully to reform them, or, as he puts it, to "clear away the old order" during the rush of the 1918 revolution. Well, yes. But at the time (1918-21), the Social Democrats and their allies instead were expending their limited political capital coming to terms with those institutions -- a move necessitated by Communist efforts violently to overthrow the fledgling democracy. If there was a way to purge the army -- at that moment or later--Weitz doesn't reveal it.

So in the end, says Weitz, Weimar failed for its unwillingness to clear away the old order. That's always a popular prescription on campus, but not always feasible in the real world.

These caveats aside, this is not a bad choice for the reader who plans on reading only one book on Weimar. If, however, one's interest runs more toward arts, letters, and culture, one might look instead I suppose to Peter Gay. For political analysis, Richard Evans' The Coming of the Third Reich remains a superior choice.

Awesome History of the Weimar Republic
Ch 1: A Troubled Beginning - Broad overview of the environment in Germany prior to the creation of the Weimar Republic in midsummer 1919.
Ch 2: Walking the City - Interesting description of German society to include daily life, offices, hotels, cafes, entertainment, and the night life.
Ch 3: Political Worlds - Discusses deep political divisions within Germany and shifting alliances among Social Democratic Party (SPD), German Democratic Party (DDP), and the Catholic Center Party (with interesting discussions about the rift between liberal-social reform and conservative authoritarian wings). Discusses the major parties on the right to include the German National People's Party (DNVP) and German People's Party (DVP) with a focus on pro-business, private property, and low taxes (versus the Marxist message of class struggle). Introduces the concepts of Jewish Bolshevism versus German National Socialism. The discussion of printing money, monetary inflation and hyperinflation has frightening parallels to the US Government today.
Ch 4: A Turbulent Economy and an Anxious Society - Discusses postwar readjustment, inflation, hyperinflation and then the Great Depression to include printing too much money and introduction of new currency. Overview of German rationalization and the negative impact of German social welfare programs, and subsequent cuts to try to get their spending under control.
Ch 5: Building a New Germany - a focus on architecture
Ch 6: Sound and Image - focus on radio, photography and movies (great photos reprinted)
Ch 7: Culture and Mass Society - discussion of German intellectuals, philosophers, and social theorists to include their preoccupation with the meaning of the "masses" and "mass society"
Ch 8: Bodies and Sex - Eye opening description of social shifts in physical fitness and sexuality, to include Velde, who wrote "the key to enduring happiness in marriage lay in mutual, ongoing sexual pleasure" (p. 299). Discusses the "new woman" who emerged from the sexual revolution of the 1920s.
Ch 9: Revolution and Counterrevolution from the Right - Powerful discussion on the melding of German nationalism and socialism, and the emergence of the Nazi Party.

Superb historical analysis combined with an easy to read narrative and awesome photos. Five Stars!

Dr. B. Leland Baker, author of "Tea Party Revival"
Tea Party Revival: The Conscience of a Conservative Reborn: The Tea Party Revolt Against Unconstrained Spending and Growth of the Federal Government

Sandwiched in between the glittering world of the Second Reich and the nightmare that was the Third Reich, the Weimar Republic continues to fascinate students of modern European history. The perennial interest is due in large part to the belief that much of what became characteristic of "modernism" blossomed during the brief life of this ill-fated experiment in republican government. Although much of what became known as "Weimar culture" was merely latent during the Wilhelmine period and simply burst forth once the oppressive atmosphere yielded to the fresh air of the postwar republic, it cannot be denied that Weimar Germany was one of those unusual periods in history when the creative spirit of a people gives birth to what may rightly be termed a golden age. In this case, what followed the golden age was such an antithesis that the memory of its brief life continues to haunt us, not unlike that of the mythical Atlantis.

Professor Eric D. Weitz is particularly well-suited to present us with this new and well-written history of Weimar Germany. He has researched and published extensively in the area of twentieth-century German history. The narrative itself, as well as the notes and bibliography, testify to the fact that Professor Weitz has done his homework.

Weimar Germany is a survey of the history of the Weimar Republic, not merely a study of its cultural life in all its diversity. The book's theme is well known. The Weimar Republic was born of an incomplete revolution in 1919, one best described as "a set of compromises aimed at steering Germany from the chaos of defeat and revolution toward democracy and economic revival" (28). In the beginning, the "forces of order" that feared a real revolution from below (i.e., a Bolshevik revolution) cooperated with the Social Democrats who, "in the grips of panic" embraced the old elites rather than carry through a revolution that would lead to a new order in Germany. Once the initial panic passed, the old elites who never wanted a republic looked to "other allies, which they found, ultimately, in the Nazi Party" (28). There was "no societal consensus on any of the fundamental issues of politics, social order, and culture" (367). The "conservative revolutionaries" who betrayed the republic "were, in many cases, serious thinkers and writers [Weitz uses Oswald Spengler as an example.] , who also happened to be profoundly anti-democratic and, in many but not all instances, anti-Semitic as well" (334). In the end the old elites betrayed the republic to a new, more thorough-going, revolution that had mass appeal, and that brought with it a new order that would eventually frighten the darkest imagination.

It is common to view the Weimar era in German history positively, especially in light of what followed. In fact, it was a period of cultural decadence. Wilhelmine Germany gave way to a new cosmopolitan Germany. The Weimar constitution seemed to legitimatize a new spirit the was alien to all things "German." It was the triumph of the Enlightenment over the true German spirit. Could American Negro jazz ever be as German as a Wagner opera? The cultural decadence of the period lives on in the popular musical Cabaret, based on Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories. Isherwood, a homosexual, was drawn to Berlin in the early 1930's because all moral restraints seemed to have been jettisoned in the name of individual freedom. The belief in the freedom of the individual was contrary to what Leonard Krieger has called "the idea of German freedom."

Most Germans displayed half-hidden, if not open contempt for all that the Weimar regime stood for. They became willing converts, if not already believers in, the romantic Volkish nationalism that arose in Germany during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, a nationalism that became the pseudo-religious ideology of the National Socialists. During the Third Reich, nationalism would become idolatrous, as recognized by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Weimar interlude, and that is just what it was, an interlude, was crushed in the revolution of 1933 that brought Hitler to power. The real revolution would come with the defeat of Germany in the Second World War. Only total military defeat could break the spell of Volkish nationalism with its roots deep in German history. In the end the democratic and cosmopolitan spirit of the Enlightenment triumphed in Germany, as it already triumphed in Western Europe. Is the Germany of today, a product of that revolution is preferable to Wilhelmine Germany? Is the multi-cultural Europe of today preferable to the Europe of the Edwardian era? These are questions beyond the scope of Professor Weitz's book and this review of it. Still they are questions worth asking and pondering when reflecting on the history of Weimar Germany.

Professor Weitz has served the profession well by giving readers a new, fresh history of this most interesting period in German and European history. Weimar Germany deserves to be read by the general reader as well as the history student. By going beyond a history of only the cultural flowering that characterized Weimar Germany, it provides a balanced and integrated history of the Weimar Republic that surpasses Peter Gay's classic, Weimar Culture. But when it comes to bringing the Weimar Republic to life in all its color, it falls short of Otto Friedrich's Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920's (1972), still this reviewer's favorite history of Weimar Germany. Whereas Weitz has written a history, Otto Friedrich uses numerous interviews with participants (still possible during the sixties) to bring the era to life as if the reader was able to visit the cabaret with "Herr Issyvoo" and Fraeulein Sally Bowles.

The Weitz volume is good if you're interested in a history of the political left and of Weimar progressive culture, but much social, economic, and political history doesn't get as much attention as the left-wing parties and progressive architecture, performance arts, and fine arts.

I became interested in Weimar Germany after attending the recent
exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum. Seeing this fascinating
show made me want to learn more about this unique era of German
history. So I was pleased to see this newly published book.
It's well researched covering topics from politics and
economics thru arts such as film, architecture and music. I was
surprised and disappointed that the author didn't address the
great german painters of this period. A really puzzling ommission
to me. He covers how the Weimar republic came to be and how it
was doomed to failure and how it inevitably led to the rise
of Hitler and the Third Reich. I learned a lot from this
book. I would have given it a higher rating but I found
the writing kind of stilted and stiff. The author doesn't
really engage the reader. But I would recommend it to
anyone who is interested in learning about this unique
period of German history

This delves deeply into the art, architecture, literature and philosophy of Weimar Germany. Weitz is especially good at describing and summarizing works of literature and art. I learned much about the careers and works of many notables of the era. The collaboration Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill in developing 'The Three Penny Opera" is well told. Works of Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque and others are nicely reviewed. Careers and influence
of architects Bruno Taut, Walter Gropius and Erich Mendlesohn are described in detail.
Art works of Kathe Kollwitz and Hannah Hoch are pictured and their influence described.
Philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Oswald Spengler is very well analyzed. Many others are mentioned with somewhat lesser detail.

Along with excellent coverage of culture, there is much missing. The significance of the somewhat popular view of Weimar as a "Jew-Republic" is not well captured. Politicians of the era, like Friedrich Ebert, Gustav Streseman and Karl Leibnecht get only passing coverage. Hindenberg rates a nice picture in uniform and jackboots. German science is curiously absent. Einstein is mentioned only as a friend and guest of architect Erich Mendelsohn.
There is no mention of the significant contributions of Heisenberg or other German scientists
although many were already looking for other venues. In spite of many references to the German inflation of 1919 to 1923 and war reparations, coverage of economics is sparse. Hjalmar Schacht is never mentioned. The Dawes, Locarno and Young plans are all mentioned with few specifics.

There is an interesting, albeit sparse, view of the development and relationships among the political parties including rise of the right wing parties. The book ends in triumph of the Nazis in a reaction to the effects of the depression. It indicates how Bruning's tight money policy exacerbated economic problem as in the USA and other locations.

Like America, Germany in the inter-war period exhibited conspicuous consumption in the midst of poverty. The social effects of radio and film in Germany are extensively covered with influence on elections and entertainment, culminating in their use for government propaganda as well as insights into the movie industry and attitudes on sex and physical fitness.
Arnold Shonberg's critique of radio is very interesting.

There are potentially valuable references to works of Theodore Mommson, Erich Eych and others. The book does leave me with the desire to read more. The book is enhanced by a wonderful selection of photographs, some by the author, that are well chosen to relate to the text. Special mention should be made of Weitz's profound synopsis of Oswald Spengler's 'Decline of the West' and his view of the career of the philosopher Martin Heidegger. Weitz uses these and other examples to justify his verdict that German intellectuals had a hand in the eventual right wing triumph. There was more than thuggery to the Nazi movement.
The social aspect of the Hitler Youth is ominously mentioned.

This surely deserves a five star rating as a view of Weimar culture, although there should have been a disclaimer for anyone expecting more on politics or economics.

The subtitle for this book is most apt, for the period in question, between the end of the first World War until the Nazi rise to power, was indeed a period of great promise and ultimately great tragedy (the rise of the Nazis). World War 1 had been devastating for the Germans both in their defeat and the horrific numbers of dead and wounded and for the humiliation the Germans felt as a result of the Versailles Treaty.
Yet the German Empire was over and there was a spirit that the days of the staid aristocratic elites was past. It was a period of incredible ups and downs with rapid economic recovery tempered by severe economic crashes. There was a whiff of revolution in the air - politically, socially, sexually and in the arts and architecture. It was an exciting and tumultuous period.

Weitz takes us on a walk through Weimar Berlin , Weimar politics , working life, art, entertainment and body culture. Very readable and informative.

This book about the Weimar Republic is very informative and shows that history does repeat itself. It is very timely, because we, in the United States, are presently witnessing many of the political, economic and cultural situations that are similar to what happened during the Weimar Republic. Let's hope that no dictatorship and war are needed this time around to get over deflation, inflation, disfunctional government and cultural upheavals.

I recommend this books highly as people should learn from history.