Weimar Republic

Die Folgen des Ersten Weltkriegs stellten die Weimarer Republik vor extreme Herausforderungen. Vor dem Hintergrund der Kriegsniederlage und der harten Bedingungen des als Diktatfrieden empfundenen Versailler Vertrags erschienen der Einsatz der Bevölkerung und die Opfer der Kriegsjahre unerträglich und sinnlos. Hier liegen die Wurzeln für die Allgegenwart des Krieges und der Kriegstoten in der politischen Kultur Weimars, welche die junge Republik nachhaltig belastete und zu einer fortdauernden Politisierung des Kriegsgedenkens führte. Dies provozierte leidenschaftliche Kontroversen über den Sinn des Krieges und die Lehren, die aus dem Weltkrieg zu ziehen seien.
Arndt Weinrich untersucht in seinem Buch die Konjunkturen der Wahrnehmung und Instrumentalisierung des Ersten Weltkriegs in ausgewählten Jugendverbänden der Zwischenkriegszeit: in der bürgerlichen Jugendbewegung, der katholischen Jugend und im sozialdemokratischen Jungbanner. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung steht das Weltkriegsgedenken der Hitler-Jugend, das im Kontext der nationalsozialistischen Besetzung des öffentlichen Raumes eine Doppelfunktion erfüllte. Einerseits zielte der Kult um die Gefallenen des "Großen Krieges" innerhalb der HJ auf die mentale Mobilmachung und Kriegserziehung der Jugend, andererseits diente er der Befriedung eines in der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit noch geschürten Generationenkonflikts mit den "Frontsoldaten" des Ersten Weltkriegs. Die vorliegende Studie arbeitet heraus, in welchem Maße sich mit dem Weltkriegsgedenken in der Zwischenkriegszeit Repräsentations- und Geltungsansprüche verbanden und wie sehr die Deutungshoheit über das "Kriegserlebnis" insbesondere nach 1933 eine wichtige Herrschaftsressource darstellte.

*Winner of the Peter C. Rollins Prize for Best Book of the Year from the Northeast Popular Culture Association*
An investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures.

The Bauhaus (1919–1933) is one of the twentieth century's most influential art schools, celebrated as the archetypal movement of rational modernism and famous for bringing functional and elegant design to the masses. In Haunted Bauhaus, art historian Elizabeth Otto liberates Bauhaus history, uncovering a movement that is vastly more diverse and paradoxical than previously assumed. Otto traces the surprising trajectories of the school's engagement with occult spirituality, gender fluidity, queer identities, and radical politics. The Bauhaus, she shows us, is haunted by these untold stories.

The Bauhaus is most often associated with a handful of famous artists, architects, and designers―notably Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer. Otto enlarges this narrow focus by reclaiming the historically marginalized lives and accomplishments of many of the more than 1,200 Bauhaus teachers and students (the so-called Bauhäusler), arguing that they are central to our understanding of this movement. Otto reveals Bauhaus members' spiritual experimentation, expressed in double-exposed “spirit photographs” and enacted in breathing exercises and nude gymnastics; their explorations of the dark sides of masculinity and emerging female identities in design; the “queer hauntology” of certain Bauhaus works; and the school's communist period (1928–1932), when Bauhäusler put their skills into the service of the revolution―even as Nazism emerged and entered the Bauhaus itself.

With Haunted Bauhaus, Otto not only expands our knowledge of a foundational movement of modern art, architecture, and design, she also provides the first sustained investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures. This is a fresh, wild ride through the Bauhaus you thought you knew.

"Weimar Cumhuriyeti’nin çarpıcı bir özelliği, dönemin yetkin kamu hukukçularının, karşılaştıkları güncel sorunlara yoğun bir ilgi göstermeleri ve bu çerçevede kapsamlı tartışmalar yürütmeleridir. Kelsen ve Schmitt arasındaki tartışmayı özel kılan, kamu hukukunun pek çok temel kavramına dair iki farklı görüşü içermesidir. Her şeyden önce, korunacak olan anayasanın anlamı, bir koruyucu arayışına yol açan tehlikenin kaynağı, koruyucunun kim olacağı ve tüm bu sorunların arka planında yer alan başlıca mesele olarak demokrasi kavramı... Fakat tartışma konuları ve karşıtlıklar bunlarla da sınırlı kalmaz; devletin niteliği, kuvvetler ayrılığının anlamı, parlamentarizmin özellikleri ve sorunları, siyasi partilerin işlevi, yargısal kararın ayırt edici özellikleri ve tabii Rousseau’nun demokrasi kuramının yorumu konusunda da aynı keskinlikle devam eder."

Weimar döneminde yaşanan bir kamu hukuku tartışmasının bugün bir güncelliği var mıdır? Dünyanın popülist sağ siyasetlerin eksenine kaydığı, anayasanın ve kamu tarifinin “kişisel ihtiyaçlara” göre sündürüldüğü, demokrasinin pekâlâ siyasal “mugalata” olarak ele alınabildiği bir dönemde kuşkusuz bu sorunun yanıtı “evet”tir! Berke Özenç Demokrasiyi ve Anayasayı Korumak’ta içinde yaşadığımız çağın siyasal tartışma başlıklarından -belki de- en önemlisini, Weimar döneminin ışığında kapsamlı bir şekilde ele alıyor.

At the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was publicly excluded from the European ‘civilizing mission’. The victorious Allies stripped Germany of its overseas empire. The German colonies were awarded to other imperial powers as mandates under the League of Nations. This action was justified by citing colonial atrocities, such as the German campaign against the Herero, which were used to label Germans as ‘exceptionally
cruel colonial masters’ and ‘unfit imperialists’. Yet, during the tenure of the League’s mandate system, several former German colonial officials rose to prominence in the League of Nations as ‘imperial experts’.
The involvement of German colonial officials in League agencies and events suggests that, although no longer part of an imperial power and officially ostracized from the ‘work of civilization’, Germans remained
adaptive contributors to international discourses on empire. In order to determine how individual Germans and lobbying interests were able to make use of the spirit of internationalism to minimize their association
with ‘unfit imperialists’ and re-establish themselves as ‘fellow civilizers’, this paper focuses on the interwar careers and interactions of two colonial officials: Dr Ludwig Kastl and Dr Julius Ruppel—former bureaucrats who had served in the African colonies, each of whom became German members on the PMC.

De veertien jaren tussen de val van het Keizerrijk en de overname van de macht door Hitler zijn een bewogen tijd van politiek extremisme, economische crisis, een sterke behoefte aan afleiding en vermaak, maar ook van een merkwaardige culturele bloei. We zien een veelheid aan stijlen, maar de stromingen van Expressionisme en Nieuwe Zakelijkheid domineren in de beeldende kunst en in de literatuur. Het openbare leven wordt radicaal gepolitiseerd. Voor het eerst manifesteert zich de commerciële massacultuur in de nieuwe massamedia: geïllustreerde tijdschriften, grammofoonplaten, radio en vooral: de bioscoop. De door heftige conflicten verscheurde maatschappij van het Interbellum lijdt onder de posttraumatische stress van de Eerste Wereldoorlog, terwijl de Tweede oorlog zijn schaduwen al vooruit werpt.
Het is mijn bedoeling een beeld te schetsen van het verhitte klimaat van deze "goldenen zwanziger Jahre" aan de hand van een aantal representatieve literaire werken uit die periode van Heinrich Mann, Hermann Hesse, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Kurt Tucholsky en Erich Kästner.

The Great Depression, which began as the Wall Street Crash in 1929, effectively bankrupted the Weimar republic, contributing to the agenda of extremist political parties and causing the collapse of the democratic government. The Great Depression was caused by excessive reliance on foreign denominated debt and the inability to pay such debt created significant social issues such as unemployment and poverty, contributing to the cause of radical parties and eventually allowing the Nazi Party to end democracy by establishing autocratic rule.

Vor genau 100 Jahren wurde der bis dahin weitgehend unbekannte Privatgelehrte Oswald Spengler (1880– 1936) mit seinem Monumentalwerk vom Untergang des Abendlandes auf einen Schlag berühmt und avancierte zu einem der einflussreichsten Denker der Weimarer Republik. Dem durch und durch von der Goetheschen Formenlehre und vom Nietzscheanischen Elitismus Geprägten waren die Nationalsozialisten in ihrer Pöbelhaftigkeit und Gemeinheit zutiefst verhasst.

Während das Buch in der Zwischenkriegszeit in fast jedem bildungsbürgerlichen Haushalt zu finden war und auch ausländische Intellektuelle wie etwa José Ortega y Gasset, André Fauconnet, F. Scott Fitzgerald oder Henry Miller beeinflusste, spielten Werk und Verfasser nach 1945 jahrzehntelang eine immer geringere Rolle.

Indes: Fast siebzig Jahre, nachdem Theodor W. Adorno voreilig das Vergessen Spenglers konstatierte, hält sich der Universalgelehrte immer noch hartnäckig in der Diskussion und feiert in jüngster Zeit geradezu eine Wiederauferstehung. Vom Feuilleton über die Literatur bis zur wissenschaftlichen Debatte in verschiedensten Disziplinen beeinflusst er zunehmend das geistige Leben.

Das hat seinen Grund. Mit seiner grandiosen Gesamtschau der Weltgeschichte überwand Spengler als einer der ersten Denker die eurozentrische Betrachtungsweise. Seine Prognosen erweisen sich bis heute oftmals als hellseherisch visionär. Im vorliegenden Band finden sich die Gedanken von zehn deutschen und internationalen Autoren über Spenglers Bedeutung für das einundzwanzigste Jahrhundert vereint. Ob es um seinen Stellenwert für das Verständnis der Frühgeschichte, der Geschichtsphilosophie, der Rechtsgeschichte, des modernen Finanzkapitalismus, der Rolle der USA als eines »faustischen« Imperiums oder der gegenwärtigen Identitätskrise des Westens geht – in allen Beiträgen zeigt sich: Spengler bleibt weiterhin brandaktuell.

Weimar representa una herencia ambivalente: la de una Constitución relativamente lograda para una República que acabaría fracasando por razones en buena medida ajenas al texto aprobado en 1919; la de unos debates de gran altura en el plano de la teoría del Estado y del Derecho constitucional que, sin embargo, no lograron dar soporte a la pretensión normativa de la Constitución vigente. A partir de algunos fragmentos del texto de Weimar, la tensión entre, de un lado, su interpretación canónica por parte de Gerhard Anschütz y, de otro, su incorporación, de la mano de Bertolt Brecht, en el espacio cultural que él mismo configura con su obra y su presencia, quizá pueda arrojar luz sobre tal ambivalencia.

Bereits in den frühen 1930er Jahren wurde Hitlers Schrift „Mein
Kampf“ in verschiedene Sprachen übersetzt. Die Zahl der Übersetzungen
stieg danach ständig an, und jede von ihnen erschien
unter speziellen Umständen und verfolgte eigene Ziele. Sympathisanten
wie Kritiker des nationalsozialistischen Regimes
bemühten sich, den Text in eine Fassung zu bringen, die ihrer
politischen Haltung entsprach. Nach 1945 änderten sich viele
Vorzeichen, doch blieben alte übersetzungstechnische Fragen
bestehen und neue kamen hinzu.
Eingeleitet von Untersuchungen zu Hitlers Stil und zur Geschichte
der Übersetzungstheorie widmen sich die Beiträge
dieses Bandes zehn verschiedenen historischen und aktuellen
Übersetzungen von „Mein Kampf“ – ins Englische, Russische,
Spanische, Japanische, Niederländische, Hebräische, Türkische,
Portugiesische, Italienische und Französische. Erstmals
wird damit systematisch die Arbeit von Übersetzerinnen und
Übersetzern beleuchtet, die die Wahrnehmung Hitlers und des
Nationalsozialismus außerhalb des deutschsprachigen Raumes
wesentlich beeinflusst haben und immer noch beeinflussen.

The relationship between laughter and politics is perhaps not that obvious. Yet it is precisely this relationship that the following dissertation seeks to explore in the context of the early Weimar Republic. This period in German history was characterised by a deeply divided political landscape. The dissertation demonstrates how satirical outlets aligned with partisan lines and analyses how they used humour as a weapon against political adversaries. Drawing on the existing historiography and published primary source, it argues for a broad definition of satire and discusses the limits of satire as a mode of political expression. Finally, the dissertation aims to determine how, if at all, the satirical press influenced the political culture at the time. Although more research on this issue is needed, it will contend that satire deepened political rifts, and contributed to a sometimes dangerous defamatory atmosphere.

This is the student work (later reviewd and published) of an Seminaire containing the making of an remembrance site in an Hamburg district called "Hammerbrook" (which former structures were destroyed during the WWII bombing and wasn't rebuild in that form). - This particular work is the first of three, which consider the history of this district in cases of the social-political-history and the perceiption of it's "undergoing" due the "firestorm" 1943. The second paper focusses the social-politically circumstances of this former left-wing (socialdemocrat & communist) district due the Weimar Republic and early stage of the Third Reich times.

This chapter surveys the history of the middle classes in Weimar Germany from social, political , and cultural perspectives. Divisions-between industrialists and master artisans; conservatives, liberals, and left-wingers; Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; modernists and anti-modernists-were by no means new. But they were exacerbated during the First World War and in the subsequent period of rapid shifts and drastic ruptures. Occupational interests diverged, depending on how the respective groups were affected by the democratic transformation of 1918/19 and the hyperinflation that peaked in 1923. As a result , many members of the middle classes turned resentfully against the republic. Still, we should be wary of adopting the ubiquitous rhetoric of decline, for studies of associa-tional life have amounted to a rather different picture of confidence and renewal. This middle-class renewal was initially not anti-democratic per se. But it increasingly defined itself against the perceived threat of socialist revolution and, by the mid-1920s, began to fuel the rise of the extreme right. That said, the middle classes in Weimar Germany should not be seen solely in a political perspective. They exhibited remarkably diverse consumer choices and cultural activities, although it was precisely this diversity that the extreme right targeted with considerable success.

Inhaltsverzeichnis der Dissertation: Olaf Kistenmacher: Arbeit und "jüdisches Kapital". Antisemitische Aussagen in der KPD-Tageszeitung Die Rote Fahne während der Weimarer Republik, Bremen 2016. http://www.editionlumiere.de/kistenmacher.html

Als antifaschistische Partei hat die Kommunistische Partei Deutsch­lands sich stets gegen Judenhass ausgesprochen, auch hat sie natio­nalsozialistische und völkische Parteien bekämpft. Trotzdem finden sich in der Tageszeitung der KPD, Die Rote Fahne, in allen Phasen der Weimarer Republik antisemitische Aussagen. Die Analyse der Zeitung zeigt, dass diese Aussagen zum einen mit dem spezifischen Natio­na­lis­mus der KPD zusammenhängen, zum anderen auf einem fetischi­sier­ten und personifizierten Antikapitalismus basieren. Das »jüdische Kapital« erschien lediglich als eine besondere Gruppe innerhalb der Kapitalisten. Im Gegensatz dazu konstruierte die KPD das Kollektiv der »Arbeiter«. Das Selbstverständnis als »Arbeiter« prägte darüber hinaus den Anti­intellektualismus wie auch den Antizionismus.

Essay for the catalogue "Art in Battle" at KODE in Bergen, Norway. The exhibition examines the Norwegian art world during the German occupation during the Second World War. This essay provides context by looking at the case of one German painter, and suggesting the implications of that case for the discipline of art history and its institutions in general.

This paper compares and contrasts different approaches, studies and views as to the democratization process of Germany after 1945. It focuses on different perspectives and arguments to explore how they relate to each other and/or how they contradict with one another.

Peeling the Onion. A Look Backwards on National Bolshevism in the 1900s.
This article aims at analyzing the problematic trajectory of National Bolshevism, an “oxymoronic” provocative political concept, born and developed throughout the Twentieth Century. Such concept appears
in several different contexts, employed more or less legitimately. This article will attempt to outline a kind of conceptual mapping, located in clear historical as well as geographic coordinates (Germany, France, Soviet Union, Russia and some short mentions to Italy) through an
accurate historiographical overview and an extensive examination of the press of that period. This mapping will identify some of the circumstances, in which the National Bolshevik thought emerges as a part of the broader history of exchanges and intertwining between the ideas of Socialism and Nation.

Wojciech Skóra, Zatrzymanie polskiego jachtu „Jurand” w Ustce (Stolpmünde) w 1931 roku. Epizod z początków polskiego żeglarstwa morskiego [The arrest of Polish yacht "Jurand" in Ustka (Stolpmünde) in 1931. The episode of the early Polish sea sailing], [w:] Bezpieczeństwo Polski w Europie. Historyczne uwarunkowania bezpieczeństwa. Księga dedykowana Profesorowi Bogusławowi Polakowi z okazji 45-lecia pracy twórczej oraz 70-lecia urodzin, red. Zbigniew Danielewicz, Jacek Knopek, Michał Polak, Koszalin 2015, s. 181-197.

Gustav Stresemann, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and German Foreign Minister of the 1920s, is well-known for the international cooperation of the Weimar Republic with Europe’s great powers. He simultaneously pursued a peaceful modification of the eastern boundaries of Germany, while accepting the reality of the Versailles system. This paper analyses the change in Germanys relations with her eastern neighbours, as well as Stresemann’s intentions to achieve border revisions and to support German minorities abroad. It is especially exciting to consider the purposes of the German approach to the Soviet Union in Stresemann’s program, and if this could have been used to force concessions from the West. The study also sheds light on why Stresemann overestimated the revisionist potential of the ocarno Treaties, and on the remaining possibilities of border revisions that existed at the end of his six-year tenure as Foreign Minister.

Published in 2004, this essay focuses on the communist-activist artist Alice Lex-Nerlinger who, working during the closing years of the Weimar Republic, created works ranging from subtle photomontages that were reproduced in Werner Gräff's Es kommt der neue Fotograf! to didactic stencils intended to be mass-reproduced on photo paper. With her images she fought for such causes as workers’ rights, anti militarism, and the elimination of the Weimar constitution’s notorious paragraph 218, the anti abortion clause. Working during the late 1920s and early 1930s along with other members of the activist artists group Die Abstrakten, Lex-Nerlinger sought to use art as a weapon but would ultimately be silenced by National Socialism.

Carl Schmitt continues to haunt German political thought and intellectual life. In order to track the legacy of Schmitt, this article will concentrate on his notion of the ‘decision’ and the post-Weimar development of this idea. The ‘decision’ has proved to be a stumbling block in post-war intellectual debates about the political make-up of German society. Turning one’s attention to the importance of decision-making within a democracy always had to go along with a pronounced distance from the authoritarian ‘decisionism’ which Carl Schmitt and other Weimar intellectuals came to represent. Nevertheless, liberal readings of Schmitt have emerged. Critics like Jürgen Habermasm, however, regard any kind of decisionism as elitist or anti-democratic, even if based on a liberal conviction. This article discusses the link between the anti-liberal decisionism during Weimar and its post-war transformation into a liberal decisionism. It also points to the relationship which, despite the polemical nature of the debate, connects Habermas’ idea of discourse with the post-Weimar notion of decision.