Writers and Politics in the Weimar Republic

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Gunnemann
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
German Society ◽  
Great Difficulty ◽  
Thomas Mann ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Berlin Alexanderplatz ◽  
Heinrich Mann ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Post War

This chapter provides a literary and historical glimpse into the political fortunes of the great writers and novelists of the Weimar era, focusing on Kurt Tucholsky, Alfred Döblin, and the brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann. Tucholsky (1890–1935) was foremost a polemical political journalist, a humorist, and a writer of satiric poetry for the cabarets of Berlin. No ills of the Republic escaped his witty scrutiny, but when the Republic failed he ended his life in despair. Heinrich Mann (1871–1950) was both a prolific writer of fiction and one of Germany's leading political essayists. In response to the cultural changes of the twenties, he developed a new aesthetic for fiction that helped him preserve his utopian ideal of a democratic Germany. Döblin (1878–1957) expressed his criticism of post-war German society with greatest success in Berlin Alexanderplatz. Thomas Mann (1875–1955) is a representative of those writers who had great difficulty in moving away from their aesthetic and autonomous view of literature to a more “democratic” way of writing.

Bridging the Political Gaps

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-74
Author(s):  
Christian E. Roques
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Thomas Mann ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The Political ◽  
Paul Tillich ◽  
Karl Mannheim ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Political Spectrum

Political romanticism is one of the keys to accessing the intellectual debates of the Weimar Republic. This article tries to adopt a radically historicized approach centered on the concept of reception. Such an approach allows it to focus on the strategic nature of the different uses that were made of the romantic paradigm between 1918 and 1933. This article contends that one of the main features that romanticism offers in the German context is its interdiscursive quality that renders it able to transcend traditional political divisions like left /right and conservative/progressive. This idea is illustrated in this article with a series of examples covering the entire lifespan of the Republic and the entire political spectrum therein, which can be represented by such figures as Sigmund Rubinstein, Thomas Mann, Hans Freyer, Carl Schmitt, Karl Mannheim, Othmar Spann, Wilhelm von Schramm, and Paul Tillich.

Modern Angst

German Angst ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 130-157
Author(s):  
Frank Biess
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
German Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
Negative Consequences

This chapter shifts the focus from fears and anxieties that primarily resulted from the Federal Republic’s external situation to internal fears. The modernization and stabilization of West German society generated their own fears. This chapter focuses on fears of automation during the late 1950s and 1960s. Contrary to conventional wisdom, West Germans did not display an unabashed optimism about technology but were keenly aware of the ambivalent consequences of technological progress. In particular, they remembered the negative consequences of the rationalization movement of the 1920s and their impact on the political stability of the Weimar Republic. The chapter analyzes first the debate about technology among West German intellectuals such as Friedrich Pollock, Helmut Schelsky, and Arnold Gehlen. It then focuses on the broader cultural debate on automation that brought into view anxieties about structural unemployment, deskilling of workers, and psychological impact of automation. As a case study, the chapter then analyzes the confrontation of the largest West German industrial union, IG Metall, with automation. Labor unions did not respond to automation with optimism but were keenly aware of its potentially detrimental effects. A more skeptical attitude toward automation and technological progress more generally thus predated the economic crisis of the 1970s.

Norman Davies. Heart of Europe. A Short History of Poland. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1984. Pp. xxi, 511.

2004 ◽  
pp. 336-337
Author(s):  
L. R. Lewitter
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
European Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Post War

This chapter examines Norman Davies's Heart of Europe (1984). The delicate subject of Polish–Jewish relations in history, not being strictly relevant to the main theme of Heart of Europe, receives little attention. Davies writes with sympathy about the extermination of most of the Jewish community by the Germans during the last war and with restraint about the participation of Jews in the activities of the Communist Party before the war and in those of the political police in the post-war period. Those who regard the Poles as traditional anti-semites will do well to note the autonomy and the scope for economic activity and religious life enjoyed by the Jewish community in the Republic of Poland–Lithuania. In the later 19th and early 20th centuries, a conjunction of pressure and reform opened the flood gates of a reservoir of Jewish talent stored up in those areas, making a unique contribution to Polish, and very soon also to western European culture. Nevertheless, Heart of Europe can be considered as an initiation into the arcane elements of Polish history and politics.

Praeceptor Germaniae

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Mann ◽  
German Culture ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Western Civilisation ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Thinker ◽  
Divided Germany

Understanding acumen and politics plus German culture and Western civilisation as diametrically opposed is a German disease which Thomas Mann also succumbed to. Initially, Mann did not regard democracy as an appropriate form of government for Germans as they were not able to love politics: he was therefore just one apolitical individual among many. Eventually, Thomas Mann liberated himself from this prejudiced approach to politics and the apolitical, and came to terms with democracy. From then on, he countered radicalism’s propensity to use violence with republican reason, which led to him being treated with hostility, persecuted and forced into exile. Politics, which was originally alien to him, swept its way into his life and forced him to adopt a standpoint on it, without him ever having become a political person or even a political thinker at heart. His comments on politics did not leave West and East Germans unaffected, especially as the idea of a cultural nation, through which acumen suddenly legitimised politics, was one of the few things which held the seemingly irreconcilably divided nations together. In post-war Germany, Thomas Mann increasingly became a ‘Praeceptor Germaniae’ (one of the country’s most eminent teachers). In this book, prominent experts clearly depict his gravitation towards the republic, his road into exile, his fight against Hitler and his influence on a divided Germany. With contributions by Manfred Görtemaker, Philipp Gut, Helmut Koopmann, Horst Möller, Heinrich Oberreuter, Julia Schöll, Hans-Rudolf Vaget, Georg Wenzel, Ruprecht Wimmer and Hans Wisskirchen.

Who governs Germany?

1966 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-132
Author(s):  
Ralf Dahrendorf
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Political System ◽  
German Society ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Feudal Society ◽  
Imperial Germany ◽  
East German

Imperial Germany had a monopolistic elite which managed to establish and uphold, with the assistance of an authoritarian welfare state, the apparent paradox of an industrial feudal society. Members of this elite held many of the leading positions in German society themselves, but others they passed into strange, if safely controlled hands. The monopoly broke along with the political system of Imperial Germany. But the memory of—and at times nostalgia for— the masters of the monopoly, whose passing turned out to be a long process, followed their surviving servants throughout the Weimar Republic. In any case, no distinct new political class emerged before that created by the National Socialist leadership clique and this was, once again, if in a more precarious version, monopolistic. East German society has followed in this tradition in its own, apparently similar, although substantively peculiar, manner. Moreover, there can be no doubt that these traditions reverberate in West German society as well; not even total defeat produces a social tabula rasa. But two features characteristic of traditional German elites are now absent: first, the monopoly of one elite, or indeed the claim to it; and secondly, the nostalgic memory which the leadership groups of the Weimar Republic had of such a monopoly.

scholarly journals An intraparty dispute at the beginning of the 1970s. The case of Pasaga Mandzic and Tuzla group

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-267
Author(s):  
Dženita Sarač-Rujanac ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The Political ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Post War ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Real Truth ◽  
Consistent Application

In this paper, the author emphasizes the specific case of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian intraparty dispute in the context of the reconstruction of the republican leaderships in Yugoslavia, the change of “Croatian Spring participants” and “liberals” as well as the so-called “senior cadres” at the beginning of 1970s. Pasaga Mandzic's years-long dispute with the current political leadership in Tuzla and also in the Republic will touch upon various issues, from plans and results of economic and urban development, integration of enterprises, organization and activities of political and party leadership to establishing the "historical truth" about the events throughout the war years 1941 and 1942. Considering the current socio-political discourse, Mandzic will come out very boldly, demanding that it is finally time to "speak openly" about the actual war events, the consequences of Partisan-Chetnik cooperation at the end of 1941, the dominance of the Serb element in the communist leadership and its attitude towards the Bosniaks during the war, but also in the post-war period. The insistence on establishing the "real truth" entailed a revision of the existing image of a "glorious war past", which also raised the question of consistent application of the principles of brotherhood and unity. Ultimately, years of clarification resulted in the political elimination and moral discredit of Pasaga Mandzic.

Elections, Election Campaigns, and Democracy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Mergel
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Rapid Change ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Political Group ◽  
The Republic

One of the phenomena of the Weimar Republic most in need of explanation is the rapid change from an initially widespread and overwhelming approval of the republic, to vast parts of society turning away from democracy just a few years later. This chapter explores the Reichstag elections and political communication around them as a manifestation of political group affiliations, traditions, and political expectations. Voting rights were expanded significantly, with democratic inclusion taking on new dimensions. However, this did not fundamentally challenge traditional affiliations to political camps. The radicalization of the electorate was a process that largely occurred within the political camps. This resulted in a culture of antagonism becoming more dominant, which, at the same time, clashed with the widespread longing for a homogeneous ‘people’s community’ and organic leadership.

German Jews in the Weimar Republic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Gillerman
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
The Political ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Demographic Profile ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Republic ◽  
German Jewish

The chapter discusses the social and demographic profile of the Jewish minority in Germany from 1918 to 1933, the political preferences and perspectives of German Jews during this period and German Jewish cultural production in multiple spheres. The chapter argues that Weimar Jewish history represented both a continuation and intensification of the dynamics of German Jewish history more generally, in which the forces of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the tensions between universalism and particularism, became even more pronounced. As Weimar-era Jews redefined their notions of belonging, many reclaimed a particularism without renouncing the humanistic and liberally inflected notions of Deutschtum, continuing to work toward shaping a culture in which they could be at home. Yet during the final years of the Republic, their notion of Deutschtum diverged ever more from that held by increasing numbers of other Germans.

The Holy See and Czechoslovakia 1945—1948 in the Context of the Nascent Cold War

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8 (106)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Emilia Hrabovec
Keyword(s):  
International Perspective ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
Holy See ◽  
The Republic ◽  
To Come ◽  
Post War ◽  
Sphere Of Influence ◽  
Second World

The spectre of Communist expansion as a result of the Second World War represented for Pope Pius XII one of the greatest concerns. The unambiguously pro-Soviet orientation of the Czechoslovak government in exile and the crucial influence of Communists in the inner architecture of the restored state convinced the Holy See that Czechoslovakia was already in 1945 fully absorbed into the Soviet sphere of influence. This fact strengthened the Pope’s conviction of the necessity to resume relations with Prague as soon as possible and to send a nuncio there who would provide reliable information and protect the interests of the Church threatened both by open persecution and by propaganda manoeuvres in favour of a “progressive Catholicism”. The importance of the relations with Czechoslovakia stood out also in the international perspective, in which Czechoslovakia, in contrast to Poland or Hungary, seemed to be the last observatory still accessible to the Vatican diplomacy in the whole East-Central Europe. The year 1947 represented a caesura in the relations between the Holy See and Czechoslovakia. In the international context, this year was generally perceived by the Vatican as a definitive reinforcement of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe. In the Czechoslovak framework, the greatest importance was ascribed to the political crisis in Slovakia in autumn 1947, during which the Communists definitively took over the political power in Slovakia. The lost struggle over the predominantly Catholic Slovakia, that for some time had been considered by the Vatican one of very few hopes for the defence of Christian interests in the Republic, was perceived by the Holy See as a dominant breakthrough on the way to the total Communist transformation of Czechoslovakia. While in the immediate post-war period the Holy See had tried to come to terms with Czechoslovakia also at the price of some compromises, in winter 1947/1948 the last hopes for a diplomatic solution vanished and were replaced by the conviction that in the confrontation with Communism not diplomatic, but spiritual weapons — prayer, testimony, martyrdom — were of crucial importance.

Nationalism and Nationhood

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin R. Hochman
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Singular Form ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Post War ◽  
Political Right

The genocidal war waged by the Nazis has long influenced our understanding of German nationalism. Scholars have argued that the Third Reich was a direct result of German nationalism, which had been antisemitic, racist, militaristic, and anti-democratic from its beginnings. However, as this chapter will highlight, there was never a singular form of German nationalism, especially during the Weimar period. It is certainly true that conservatives and right-wing extremists used this virulent version of German nationalism to attack the Weimar Republic, its supporters, and the post-war international order. Yet German nationalism was not simply the domain of the political right. The supporters of the republic crafted their own form of German nationalism to help them popularize the new political system. Challenging the arguments of their opponents, these republicans insisted that there were no inherent contradictions between democracy and Germany, internationalism and nationalism, and Jews and Germans. They created a version of German nationalism that was democratic, peaceful, and more inclusive. Multiple and opposing German nationalisms therefore existed in the Weimar era.

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