The Weimar Republic began at 2:00 PM on November 9, 1918 when Philip Scheidemann declared from a second-story window in the Reich Chancellery to his hearers below that the German Reich was now a republic. It ended at 11:00 AM on January 30, 1933 when President Paul von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler Chancellor. The Cultural Chronicle of the Weimar Republic is an account of significant cultural events in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. Weimar, already a German cultural mecca because Goethe and Schiller had lived and worked there 120 years earlier, emerged as a unique and experimental culture. Weimar culture was responsible for producing such icons as actress Marlene Dietrich, novels like All Quiet on the Western Front, musicals like The Threepenny Opera, the political cabaret, the Bauhaus School, and films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis. There were hundreds of premieres, performance debuts, exhibitions, works of fiction, and other cultural events that marked the Republic as Western Civilization's first modernist society. Modernism took many forms: the Einstein Tower in Berlin, the symphonies of Paul Hindemith, the paintings of Max Beckmann, the drawings of K the Kollwitz, the novels of Alfred D blin, the industrial designs of Ferdinand Porsche, the choreography of Mary Wigman, the acting of Ernst Deutsch, the plays of Expressionism. The Cultural Chronicle of the Weimar Republic presents these and scores of other modernist inscriptions worthy of note, while providing notations that inform readers of connections among individuals, art works, related cultural activities, and significant political and economic developments.

Reproduces (translated into English) contemporary documents or writings with an introduction to each section.

In this comprehensive companion to Weimar cinema, chapters address the technological advancements of each film, their production and place within the larger history of German cinema, the style of the director, the actors and the rise of the German star, and the critical reception of the film.

November 1932. With the German economy in ruins and street battles raging between political factions, the Weimar Republic is in its death throes. Its elderly president Paul von Hindenburg floats above the fray, inscrutably haunting the halls of the Reichstag. In the shadows, would-be saviours of the nation vie for control. The great rivals are the chancellors Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher. Both are tarnished by the republic's all-too-evident failures. Each man believes he can steal a march on the other by harnessing the increasingly popular National Socialists - while reining in their most alarming elements, naturally. Adolf Hitler has ideas of his own. But if he can't impose discipline on his own rebellious foot-soldiers, what chance does he have of seizing power?

This book features a fresh and provocative chronicle of Germany from the aftermath of the First World War to the beginning of the Third Reich.

“A much-needed study of the aesthetics and cultural mores of the Third Reich . . . rich in detail and documentation.” (Kirkus Reviews) Culture was integral to the smooth running of the Third Reich. In the years preceding WWII, a wide variety of artistic forms were used to instill a Nazi ideology in the German people and to manipulate the public perception of Hitler’s enemies. During the war, the arts were closely tied to the propaganda machine that promoted the cause of Germany’s military campaigns. Michael H. Kater’s engaging and deeply researched account of artistic culture within Nazi Germany considers how the German arts-and-letters scene was transformed when the Nazis came to power. With a broad purview that ranges widely across music, literature, film, theater, the press, and visual arts, Kater details the struggle between creative autonomy and political control as he looks at what became of German artists and their work both during and subsequent to Nazi rule. “Absorbing, chilling study of German artistic life under Hitler” —The Sunday Times “There is no greater authority on the culture of the Nazi period than Michael Kater, and his latest, most ambitious work gives a comprehensive overview of a dismally complex history, astonishing in its breadth of knowledge and acute in its critical perceptions.” —Alex Ross, music critic at The New Yorker and author of The Rest is Noise Listed on Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles List for 2019 Winner of the Jewish Literary Award in Scholarship

A laboratory for competing visions of modernity, the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) continues to haunt the imagination of the twentieth century. Its political and cultural lessons retain uncanny relevance for all who seek to understand the tensions and possibilities of our age. The Weimar Republic Sourcebook represents the most comprehensive documentation of Weimar culture, history, and politics assembled in any language. It invites a wide community of readers to discover the richness and complexity of the turbulent years in Germany before Hitler's rise to power. Drawing from such primary sources as magazines, newspapers, manifestoes, and official documents (many unknown even to specialists and most never before available in English), this book challenges the traditional boundaries between politics, culture, and social life. Its thirty chapters explore Germany's complex relationship to democracy, ideologies of "reactionary modernism," the rise of the "New Woman," Bauhaus architecture, the impact of mass media, the literary life, the tradition of cabaret and urban entertainment, and the situation of Jews, intellectuals, and workers before and during the emergence of fascism. While devoting much attention to the Republic's varied artistic and intellectual achievements (the Frankfurt School, political theater, twelve-tone music, cultural criticism, photomontage, and urban planning), the book is unique for its inclusion of many lesser-known materials on popular culture, consumerism, body culture, drugs, criminality, and sexuality; it also contains a timetable of major political events, an extensive bibliography, and capsule biographies. This will be a major resource and reference work for students and scholars in history; art; architecture; literature; social and political thought; and cultural, film, German, and women's studies.