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From Berlin Bohemia to Hitler: The Weimar Republic's Crisis Democracy & the Emergence of German Fascism

New College of California Humanities/Interdisciplinary Studies Spring 2005 Instructor: Scott J. Thompson

Week 12: April 14, 2005

The Golden Years on the Eve of the Great Depression

1929-1930

[Assigned Reading from Weimar Republic Sourcebook]

A New Democracy in Crisis

III. Economic Upheaval: Rationalization, Inflation and Depression

28. Erwin Kupzyk, Postwar Concentration in the German Iron Industry (1930) [pp. 75-77]

V. The Rise of Nazism

51. Joseph Goebbels, Why Are We Enemies of the Jews? (1930) [pp. 137-138]

VI. The Struggle Against Fascism

57. Thomas Mann, An Appeal to Reason (1930) [pp. 150-159]

58. Walter Benjamin, Theories of German Fascism (1930) [pp. 159-164]

Pressure Points of Social Life

VII. White-Collar Workers: Mittelstand or Middle Class?

70. Siegfried Kracauer, Shelter for the Homeless (1930) [pp. 189-191]

VIII. The Rise of the New Woman

79. Textile Workers, My Workday, My Weekend (1930) [pp. 208-210]

IX. Forging a Proletarian Culture

93. Otto Biha, The Proletarian Mass Novel (1930) [pp. 239-240]

X. The Jewish Community: Renewal, Redefinition, Resistance

106. Theodor Lessing, Jewish Self-Hatred (1930) [pp. 268-271]

Intellectuals and the Ideologies of the Age

XI. Redefining the Role of the Intellectuals

116. Hannah Arendt, Philosophy and Sociology: On Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia (1930) [pp. 301-302]

117. Ernst von Salomon, We and the Intellectuals (1930) [pp. 302-304]

The Challenge of Modernity

XVI. Berlin and the Countryside

162. Egon Erwin Kisch, We Go to a Café Because. . . (1930) [p. 423]

163. Wilhelm Stapel, The Intellectual and His People (1930) [pp. 423-425]

Changing Configurations of Culture

XXI. Theater, Politics, and the Public Sphere

225. Max Reinhardt, On Actors (1930) [pp.546-548]

226. Das rote Sprachrohr, How Does One Use Agitprop Theater? (1930) [pp.548-549]

XXII. The Roaring Twenties: Cabaret and Urban Entertainment

236. Curt Moreck, We Will Show You Berlin (1930) [pp.563-564]

XXIII. Music for Use: Gebrauchsmusik and Opera

246. Arnold Schoenberg, My Public (1930) [pp. 584-586]

XXIV. New Mass Media: Radio and Gramophone

258. M.M. Gehrke and Rudolf Arnheim, The End of the Private Sphere (1930) [pp. 613-615]

XXV. Cinema from Expressionism to Social Realism

267. Siegfried Kracauer, The Blue Angel (1930) [pp. 630-631]

The Transformation of Everyday Life

XXVI. Visual Culture: Illustrated Press and Photography

277. Willi Warstat, Photography in Advertising (1930) [pp. 650-651]

XXIX. Sexuality: Private Rights versus Social Norms

312. Grete Ujhely, A Call for Sexual Tolerance (1930) [pp. 710-711]

XXX. On the Margins of the Law: Vice, Crime, and the Social Order

324. Willi Pröger, Sites of Berlin Prostitution (1930) [p. 736]

Supplemental Readings [photocopies supplied by instructor]

A. John Willett, Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, 1917-1933, Chronology 1930, pp. 252-255.