One of the Boys: The Smug, Patriarchal Undertones of Anders als die Andern (1919)

Modern audiences and critics are fascinated by Anders als die Andern (1919), widely considered the first feature film to focus on a homosexual relationship. The film is as exceptional for its progressive plot as it is for its miraculous survival – a large fragment of the film survived because it was hidden from the Nazis within another film. Even so, upon closer examination, it is clear that there are many misogynistic aspects of Anders that mirror elements and themes found in other Weimar films. While Anders is certainly novel in its queer subject matter, the film remains profoundly influenced by the patriarchal forces that dominated Weimar culture.

The Presence of the First World War in Weimar Culture

This chapter considers Weimar Germany as a post-war society and addresses the key historiographical strands that interpret the political and cultural significance of the lost war. It demonstrates the importance of the war’s legacy for Weimar political culture by looking at commemorative practices on a national, local, and individual level and by reflecting on some examples of the memory of the war in art, literature, photography, and film. It argues that the plurality and ambivalence of remembrance rituals and war memories in Weimar Germany need to be accounted for beyond a domination by the nationalist right and a left–right divide of commemorative activities. How and why people remembered the way they did is best understood not only at the level of the nation, but by looking at local communities, families, and individuals.

Art Work as Life Work: Lu Märten's Feminist “Objectivity”

“Art Work as Life Work: Lu Märten's Feminist ‘Objectivity’” highlights the feminist stakes of German feminist-materialist art historian Lu Märten's interventions in the interwar discourses on art and labor, on objectivity (Sachlichkeit), and the new media of film and radio. The essay argues that Märten's contributions to these areas sit squarely within more familiar narratives of materialist aesthetics and Weimar culture (from Walter Benjamin's epochal Artwork Essay to the Bauhaus) and that they do so on account of her heterodox reading of Marx and commitment to Spinoza's monism. In Märten's view, this non-binary materialism offered an alternative, non-Hegelian route to a materialist conception of art or as she preferred to say, form. In contrast to art history's academic formalism, Märten espouses a notion of form that does not maintain art's autonomy but instead connects art to other social fields. Here form always evolves out of informality. The essay traces the close bond between art work and life work across Märten's multiple publications, including her theoretical magnum opus Essence and Transformation of Forms/Arts and her studies on The Economic Conditions of Artists and The Female Artist. In so doing, the text contributes to revisiting the firm boundaries that art history has drawn between objects and communities.

Photography's Exiles: from Painting, Patriarchy, and Patria

This issue is the second part of a two-part October project dealing with the photographic practices of women in Weimar culture and in exile from it. Focusing on seven crucial figures (Ellen Auerbach, Ilse Bing, Anne Fischer, Gisèle Freund, Lotte Jacobi, Germaine Krull, and Grete Stern), the essays collected here address a wide range of productive changes and destructive conflicts challenging traditional models of the photographers' social, artistic, and professional identities. Some of these changes resulted from the impact of emerging technologies (both in the infrastructural organization of everyday life and in photography's own newly evolving technologies of cameras and color) and some from the dismantling of the liberal democratic nation state either by the rise of state socialism in the Soviet Union or of fascism in Germany. When these Weimar photographers had to find refuge in France, in the United States, in South Africa, or in Argentina, they found themselves not only confronted with the demands of a rapidly advancing and controlling culture industry but also with the caesura of cultural discontinuity and the disillusioning effects of living in exile.

Development of tourism in Germany

Introduction. The service sector is constantly and dynamically developing, creating jobs. With the important structural element of the international tourism services market, travelers are able to change previous perceptions of threats and challenges on our planet and to offer possible conditions for crisis management. The purpose of the paper is to explore the problems and prospects of tourism development in Germany, the tourist attractions in the German city of Cottbus. Scientific papers, materials of periodicals, Internet resources are the methodological and informational basis of the work. Results. Germany is a country where you always want to discover new pages – its history, character and traditions of residents, the incredible contrast of rural nature and the active life of big cities. Five new federal lands play an important role in tourism. For many regions in the east of Germany, after the reunification, tourism has become a chance to get back on its feet in economic terms. Landscapes such as Spreewald, traditional Dresden or Weimar culture cities, or Baltic resorts such as Binz on Rügen attract tourists from Germany and abroad. Cottbus is a city in eastern Germany, located on the Spree River and three railway lines 100 km from Berlin. It is considered the cultural and political center of the Sorbian population in Lower Lusatia. Attractions for tourists will be interesting Castle Branitz with the adjacent park, which is located in the south of the city. The residence was built on the special order of Prince Herman von Puckler-Muscaw, who was one of the few key figures of the country in the XIX century. At the Zoo of Cottbus – Tierpark Cottbus you can look at a variety of animals that live in all corners of the world - tigers, deer, penguins, camels, tapirs, pelicans. Conclusion. In the development of international and domestic tourism, a set of reasons that contribute to the development of domestic tourism in Germany. Famous tourist attractions in the German city of Cottbus were explored, namely: the historic building – Casper Gewerbehof, the Branitz Castle, a cinema, the Museum of Art, the Zoo – Tierpark Cottbus.