Dancing on the Volcano: Essays on the Culture of the Weimar Republic

Abstract

The culture of the Weimar Republic is important for understanding that of Nazi Germany and German history as a whole. Between 1918 and 1933, German culture was greatly concerned with modernity, and in particular with the transformation of old structures of aesthetic communication into those appropriate to a cultural "mass market". Recent debates about the German "sonderweg" - separate path to modernity - and German reunification, with its resurgence of right-wing ideologies, have forced a re-examination of the role of Weimar culture in German history, and a fresh look at the issues of cultural liberalism and repression during the Weimar Republic suggests important lessons for political, social and economic stability in the aftermath of reunification. In this volume, experts from a variety of fields - history, film studies, music, women's studies, German studies and art history - re-evaluate Weimar culture itself, and explore the ways in which it represented a variety of possible responses to modernity.