Left-wing splinter parties in the Weimar Republic

This essay was inspired by Mark Jones’ monograph Founding Weimar. Violence and the German Revolution of 1918–1919 (2016). The first section of the essay highlights the relevance of this book for historical research on the revolution of 1918/19. Its second section discusses relevant reviews of the monograph. The third and fourth sections focus on how different political movements, as well as the views of historians on the revolution of 1918/19, have changed within the past hundred years. Nowadays, critical historical research on the revolution has to focus on new questions. Since the outbreak of the present global economic crisis, the capitalist order has been in question. Alternative left-wing economic orders as they were developed by the German Ratebewegung (worker’s council movement) in 1918/19 should be discussed from a new perspective. Due to the global economic crisis, right-wing movements have gained more influence over the last decade. Parliamentary democracies are progressively eroding. Jones’ book is in contrast to the current academic discourse. This last can be considered to be in crisis, as it displays a limited understanding of the revolution of 1918/19 by merely regarding it as part of the success story of the Weimar Republic. Jones highlights the escalation of violence and the role proto-fascist Freikorps played as the initiators of this escalation. He also considers the political responsibility of the Social Democratic Party. Jones concludes that counter-revolutionary violence caused the founding as well the end of the Weimar Republic.

Reveals how socialist discourses and psychoanalytic ideas shaped the modern models of motherhood envisioned by left-wing and socially critical women writers working in the Weimar press and literary spheres.Women's experiences and opportunities in the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) were shaped by tensions between advances in women's rights and widespread adherence to conservative notions of gender roles and women's maternal duty. This book explores these tensions, which were particularly pronounced on the political left, by analyzing socialist and socially critical women writers' interventions in contemporary debates on gender and women's role in society. For women in Weimar Germany, writing represented a subversive medium through which they could individualize reproductive politics and imagine modern models of mothering. Relatable and aspirational mothering practices and mother figures feature in the literary and journalistic texts examined in this book. Theoretical and instructional works (by Alice Rühle-Gerstel and Henny Schumacher) and examples from the Social Democratic women's magazine Frauenwelt demonstrate how women writers adopted and adapted emerging psychological ideas to position their texts as modern and authoritative. A close analysis of critically neglected didactic texts (by Hermynia Zur Mühlen, Maria Leitner, Elfriede Brüning, and Else Kienle) and socially critical popular fiction (by Irmgard Keun, Vicki Baum, and Gabriele Tergit) exposes how women writers envisaged models of motherhood and family that were compatible with their political beliefs and modern lifestyles. This book reveals a pragmatic discourse that advocated progressive policies regarding reproductive choice and the rights of single mothers while leaving notions of women's maternal nature and duty largely unchallenged.

In the centenary of the Bauhaus foundation new studies were released about the role women played as part of the school instituted by Walter Gropius. In fact, the conquest for them of being able to reach the university or academic high level education, is one of the novelties registered in Germany during Weimar Republic years; therefore the Bauhaus, in its initial assumptions and in line with the republican Constitution, newly launched in 1919, opened its doors to the female community who responded with numerous applications. Soon, this professed equality, proved to be just illusory: growing numbers of women were driven exclusively towards the weaving workshops, moreover the access to different laboratories turned out to be more difficult than expected. For the foregoing reasons, this study focuses on some female figures who succeeded beyond the mere weaving workshops (in which Anni Albers and Otti Berger stood out among the others): Gertrud Grunow for pedagogy, Marianne Brandt for metallurgy and lighting engineering, Lucia Moholy and Irene Hoffmann for photography, Alma Buscher for designing toys and furniture, and especially Lilly Reich for interior design. The Reich and its connection with Mies van der Rohe are still matter of investigations that are redefining the nature of its role and authorship

This article seeks to correct the assumption that Lifelong Learning was only invented by educationists in the 1970s. In contrast to the numerous authors who regard E. Faure's 1972 book Learning to Be as the origin of lifelong learning, I refer back to Cyril O. Houle and his remarkable publication of 1961, ”The Inquiring Mind”, as the father of lifelong learning in a modern sense. Houle suggested that the roots of lifelong learning lay in ancient Judaism. The article follows this notion and provides the main stages of this argument: ancient Judaism existed primarily as a learning community, lifelong learning is demonstrated repeatedly in the Torah and Talmud, the Haskalah serves as the link with educational practice in Germany, and finally the function of the ”houses of teaching” (Lehrhauser) in the Weimar Republic (Buber, Rosenzweig, & Simon) as places of lifelong learning in both its religious and its secular sense.

Like many of us, this book originated in chance and accident rather than forethought and planning. Not long after the Wende, the coming down of the Wall, I happened to be in Berlin, and, as I wandered through the newly open city, it struck me (as it doubtless struck many others at that time) that after some sixty years — roughly the span of my own lifetime — Berlin had returned to a state it had not known since the Nazis came to power. This brought to mind the group of English writers who had, briefly or not so briefly, made Berlin their home in the last years of the Weimar Republic, and I wondered idly how much in a merely material sense had survived two generations of destruction and rebuilding, partition and reunification: how far the physical fabric of the Berlin that Wystan Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Stephen Spender and others had lived in and written about could be, historically or sentimentally, recovered or rediscovered.

The Architecture of Co-operation investigates the relationship between the collective subject and urban form through co-operation as means of production. The point is how individuals can organize co-operation today for the city as a project and what could be the role of architects into this process. Thus, the aim of the thesis is first to attempt to provide scientific evidence for the production of architecture through co-operation, highlighting possible potentials as well as pitfalls. And second, is to question whether (and if so how) co-operation can turn into a conscious project to organize the relationship between individuals and urban form. From a grammar of the concept of Human Nature the definition of co-operation adopted is a human nature evolution factor to survive the struggle against adverse circumstances. It is influenced by the contingent material factors proper to each age, but also grounded in biological invariants that human beings own as species for survival. A close reading of the work of three architects and their projects can provide a genealogy of the Architecture of Co-operation: H. Meyer with his co-op architecture for the mass society of the Weimar Republic, E. Mari and the Gruppo N promoters of emancipation through self-design in the ‘60s and ’70s in Italy, and C. Price with his concept of anticipatory and enabling architecture in the advent of Anglo-Saxon neoliberalism. This genealogy seeks after a problematization of co-operation taking distance from “participation”, the main threads of research analyse the relationship subject - object/ individual - urban form, the question of authorship and the role of the architect, and how to foster self – valorization, organization and creativity of the collective subject through architecture.

This chapter narrates and analyses the major public celebrations of international solidarity in Germany with a focus on Berlin as the scene of the celebration. In the first part, the focus of the analysis will be on the Arbeiterhilfe’s International Solidarity Days (1930–1932) that involved tens of thousands of people which, especially towards the end of the Weimar Republic, became the most important international solidarity festival.

Popper in the Weimar era (1919–1933)

ČlĂĄnek se zabĂ˝vĂĄ Schmittovou kritikou modernity a jejĂ­mi antisemitskĂ˝mi přesahy, a to na pozadĂ­ zpĹŻsobu, jimĹž Schmitt konstruoval centrĂĄlnĂ­ pojem svĂŠ teorie politična  nepřítele. Koncept nepřítele se tak v Schmittově dĂ­le postupně vyvĂ­jĂ­. V předvĂ˝marskĂŠm obdobĂ­, v němĹž vznikajĂ­ předevĹĄĂ­m vĂ˝znamnĂŠ texty Der Wert des Staates und die Bedeutung des Einzelnen a Theodor Däublers "Nordlicht", je nepřítelem předevĹĄĂ­m modernĂ­, individualistickĂ˝ člověk či modernĂ­ duch. V obdobĂ­ vĂ˝marskĂŠm se pak z nepřítele stĂĄvĂĄ jiĹž nepřítel politična, kterĂŠho Schmitt bohuĹžel a velmi odpudivĂ˝m zpĹŻsobem identifikuje v textech nacistickĂŠ diktatury s ĹžidovskĂ˝m myĹĄlenĂ­m příliĹĄ vĂĄzanĂ˝m na abstraktnĂ­ zĂĄkon. ZĂĄvěr člĂĄnku je nĂĄsledujĂ­cĂ­: politickĂĄ teorie Carla Schmitta je zaloĹžena na antiindividualistickĂŠ a tĂŠměř Ăşplně negativnĂ­ antropologii, kterĂĄ je doprovĂĄzenĂĄ teoriĂ­ sekularizace popisujĂ­cĂ­ proces neutralizace a depolitizace lidskĂŠho Ĺživota, kterĂ˝ tak ztrĂĄcĂ­ na vĂĄĹžnosti. Tento zpĹŻsob Ĺživota postrĂĄdajĂ­cĂ­m jakoukoliv transcendenci a utĂĄpějĂ­cĂ­ se pouze v obstarĂĄvĂĄnĂ­ je pak pro Schmitta Ĺživotem velmi bĂ­dnĂ˝m a neautentickĂ˝m. Celou tuto komplexnĂ­ problematiku pak člĂĄnek hodnotĂ­ na pozadĂ­ vĂ˝voje německĂŠho katolicismu v 19. stoletĂ­, do jehoĹž kontextu Schmitt nĂĄleĹžel.

Selected stages in the life and oeuvre of the natural philosopher Bemhard Bavink (1879-1947) are discussed in historical context with particular emphasis on scientiftc issues. Based on materials from the Berlin Document Center, and from his estate located in BielefeId, and supplemented by his unpublished autobiography written between 1941 and 1945 as well as by several of Bavink's papers;appearing in the journal Unsere Welt edited by him from 1920 on, and by certain passages in Bavink's books, this paper presents evidence of his courageous fight during the National Socialist (NS) regime in Germany for what he considered the untainted ,ethos of science' independent of nationality or religion. TItis is the more astonishing since before 1933, Bavink shared right-wing (Deutschnationale) politicaI opinions such as antisemitism with many of his colleagues (Fritz Ringer's Mandarins), and he only gradually realized that the new system, initially welcomed as the end of the unloved Weimar Republic, was much worse than expected. Special emphasis is given to the efforts of NS institutions to gain control over the maverick Bavink and to the reasons why they did not fully succeed in this. Extracts of letters by Planck, Joos, Finkelnburg and others demonstrate that Bavink had a vital role in the efforts of german physicists to resist the intrusion and spread of explicit anti-Semitism and NS racist ideology into their domain. It is illustrated here that it was quite possible to voice and to publish nonconformist opinions, contrary to the widespread view of lhis perlod as a time of drastic ,realignment' (Gleichschaltung) of all branches of public life to the doctrines of the German National Socialist Party (NSDAP). Because of his political ,unreliability' Bavink was prevented from getting a well-deserved chair for natural philosophy in Münster in 1941-43 and had to relinquish editorship of Unsere Welt in 1940, but neither he nor his family suffered any more drastic consequences.

The Weimar Republic (1918–33) was a pivotal period of German and European history and a laboratory of modernity. This handbook is a comprehensive reference book presenting the key findings of recent research on Weimar Germany in the most concise and accessible way. Weimar is often presented as a warning from history, and as such invoked time and time again when challenges of democratic governance are debated. But the chapters of the Handbook demonstrate that Weimar’s history is more than just the lead-up to the Third Reich or a crisis-ridden democracy: It was a period of bold experimentation in politics, society, and culture. Written by an international team of leading experts, the Handbook’s thirty-three chapters provide cutting-edge synthesis of all key topics in the history of Germany’s first democracy, covering social, political, economic, and cultural history with a focus on the historical openness of the period. The Handbook also includes a section with chronological chapters on key developments in the political sphere. Each of the chapters can be read on its own. In addition to established topics, the book includes crucial areas of Weimar history that are often forgotten. These cover the relevance of religion, the strength of pro-republican groups, federalism and nationalism, the significance of rural communities and the agricultural sector, as well as the importance of mass and visual cultures for Weimar contemporaries. Navigating Weimar Germany’s complex and contradictory history is made easier by the sound compass this Handbook provides to all readers interested in this turbulent period.

This chapter reconsiders developments in high politics in Germany in the period 1930–30 January 1933. It seeks in particular to review the manoeuvres that culminated in Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in the light of the two approaches which have underpinned much research on the Weimar Republic in general in recent decades. On the one hand, the Fischerites and Bielefeld School had argued that the fundamental problem of the Weimar Republic lay in its want of modernity, in the many hangovers from imperial Germany which characterised it, and most of all in the continuing and structurally determined power of Germany’s ‘old elites’ working together in a close ‘alliance’. This perspective was anchored in the Sonderweg thesis, which, positing a ‘Western’ norm of modernisation, held Germany to have been an aberrant exception. Detlev Peukert challenged this approach at its roots. In a seminal study first published in 1987 under the title Die Weimarer Republik: Die Krisenjahre der klassischen Moderne, 1 he here asserted that Weimar Germany, far from having missed some kind of alleged opportunity to modernise, represented a paradigmatic, indeed a ‘classical’ case, of modernity. An advanced capitalist economy, a welfare state that was even enshrined in the constitution, a large and growing service sector, bureaucracy and administrative systems, a shared belief in science and scientificity as a kind of cure-all — these are among the hallmarks of ‘classical modernity’ as he defined it.

Cross-dressing took on new political meanings in Germany's Weimar Republic, with the emergence of organizations and periodicals aimed at promoting the interests of self-identified transvestites. This new sexological category, devel- oped by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1910, formed the basis for a shared sense of iden- tity and belonging among individuals who identified as members of the opposite sex. Drawing on the experiences of the homosexual emancipation movement and discourses of bourgeois respectability, middle-class transvestites came together to demand legal and social recognition, including acknowledgement of transsexual desires. Their efforts represent a critical but forgotten moment in the history of transgender political activism.

In early twentieth-century Germany a population explosion in its big cities created a housing crisis. A widespread and heavily medialized debate prompted a search for solutions and triggered a rhetoric of the last dwelling. From large communal estates to subsistence-level dwellings, a new type of housing was propagated in newspapers, magazines, exhibitions, films, guidebooks, and advertisements. Siegfried Kracauer, architect, journalist, and author, also became engaged in this debate, willfully reinterpreting New Objectivity’s aesthetics of things (Dingästhetik) both in architectural critiques for the Frankfurter Zeitung and in his novel Ginster. This article analyzes Kracauer’s critical contribution to the modernist housing debate in the Weimar Republic.

Over the past century, the groundbreaking legacy of Expressionist cinema has inspired filmmakers and scholars alike with its special effects, visceral characters, and fantastic plotlines. In the Weimar Republic, the strangely stylized sets of what became known as Expressionist film captivated audiences worldwide with movies such as Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920), F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) and Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927). Though scholars generally agree that no Expressionist movement ever existed in cinema, I assert that the directors, screenwriters, and set designers of movies now called "Expressionist" maintained among themselves a common ideographic layout based thematically on the tropical zodiac of Western astrology, and, within the mise-en-scenes, the minor arcana pips from the standard tarot deck by Arthur Edward Waite (originally from 1910), while basing their characters on the sephiroth of the Hermetic cabala. This layout, which they implemented in all their so-called Expressionist movies, might most aptly be called an occult blueprint. I present this material in order to set forth the argument that the subliminality of occult ideography in Expressionist cinema has been ignored, neglected, and downright unnoticed in the whole of film and historical scholarship. But it is a field that demands to be taken more seriously by professionals and requires the attention of those familiar with the occult publications, arcane practices, and esoteric schools of and around Weimar Germany. Every scholar agrees: movies of this genre are filled with pentagrams, puffs of smoke, and strangelooking costumes. But all that content is nominal occultism. What about the seminal -- that is, the truly hermeneutical -- presence of the occult in Expressionist cinema? That crucial question is addressed in my paper, which combines history, film studies, and the German language to find some complex and nuanced answers.