From Berlin Bohemia to Hitler:
The Weimar Republic's Crisis Democracy
& the Emergence of German Fascism
Week 2: January 27, 2005
The New Republic & The Versailles Treaty
1919-1920
[Assigned Reading from Weimar Republic Sourcebook]
A New Democracy in Crisis
I. The Legacy of the War
6. Social Democratic Party (SPD): Appeal for a General Strike (1920) [p. 16]
II. Revolution and the Birth of the Republic [pp. 35-36]
18. Wilhelm Hausenstein, Remembering Eisner (1919-1920) [pp. 52-53]
V. The Rise of Nazism [pp. 119-120]
46. Alfred Bartels, The Struggle of the Age (1920) [pp.123-124]
47. German Workers' Party (DAP), The Twenty-Five Points (1920) [pp.124-126]
Pressure Points of Social Life
IX. Forging a Proletarian Culture [pp. 220-221]
85. A.R.: On Proletarian Culture (1920) [pp. 222-223]
Intellectuals and the Ideologies of the Age
XIV. Cultural Pessimism: Diagnoses of Decline [pp.355-357]
139. Count Hermann Keyserling: The Culture of Making It Easy for Oneself (1920) [pp. 360-362]
The Challenge of Modernity
XVIII. Housing for the Masses [pp. 454-455]
176. Martin Wagner: Path and Goal (1920) [pp. 460-461]
XIX. From Dada to the New Objectivity: Art and Politics [pp. 474-476]
189. John Heartfield & Georg Grosz: The Art Scab (1920)[pp. 483-486]
190. Richard Huelsenbeck: Dada Tours (1920) )[pp.486-487]
191. Max Beckmann: Creative Credo (1920) )[pp. 487-489]
Changing Configurations of Culture
XXV. Cinema from Expressionism to Social Realism [pp. 617-619]
260. Herbert Jhering: An Expressionist Film (1920) )[pp. 620-621]
The Transformation of Everyday Life
XXX. On the Margins of the Law: Vice, Crime, and the Social Order [pp. 718-720]
316. Thomas Wehrling: Berlin is Becoming a Whore (1920) )[pp. 721-723]
Supplemental Readings [photocopies supplied by instructor]
A. V.R. Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914, Chapter 1: The Crisis of the Prusso-German Political System, pp. 15-37.
B. Dwight E. Lee, ed.,The Outbreak of the First World War: Who or What Was Responsible, pp. 7-21/ 76-109
C. A.J. Nicholls, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler, Chapter 3-4: The Foundations of the New Republic, pp. 23-43/The Republic Makes Peace, pp. 44-55.
D. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture, Chapter 2: The Community of Reason: Conciliators and Critics, pp. 23-45,
E. Chronological Tables: (1) 18 January 1871 - 4 August 1914, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914, pp. 220-227; (2) 28/29 September 1918 -23 March 1933, Weimar and the Rise of Hitler, pp. 162-166; (3) 1917- 1920, Art & Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, pp. 230-235.