Weimar culture: Difference between revisions

In the days of the Weimar Republic (1919-1933), Germany was rendered unable to project itself economically and politically on the world stage by the harsh terms and reparations placed upon the country enumerated in the Treaty of Versailles (1918) that ended World War I. During this interbellum period, Germany became a center of culture, marking the years after the pains of war and the subsequent worldwide economic depression, with the rapid development and fervent creation of literature, art, music, dance, drama, and the new medium of the motion picture. Preeminent political theorist, Ernst Bloch would later describe the Weimar Republic's cultural explosion as a Periclean Age, comparing it to the culturally vibrant period of Athens in ancient Greece during the government of Pericles in the Fourth Century BCE.

Germany became a thriving center of many new art movements, including the stark social satires of dadaism and the vibrant depictions of expressionism, with the likes of Otto Dix, George Grosz, and John Hartfield and in architecture with the Bauhaus school. Writers like Alfred Döblin, Erich Maria Remarque and the brothers Heinrich and Thomas Mann presented a sobering look at the world and the failure of politics and society through literature. The theatres of Berlin and Frankfurt am Main exploded with new, experimental dramas by Bertolt Brecht, cabaret, and revolutionary stage direction by Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator. Concert halls and conservatories were ablaze with the atonal and modern music of Anton Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Kurt Weill. Lastly, Germany excelled in the development of cinema— the most notable example being the 1927 film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang—and dominated the motion picture industry with talented actors and actresses (Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Brigitte Helm), in the days of silent films and "talkies."

Finally, during the era of the Weimar Republic, Germany became a center of intellectual thought at its medieval universities, and most notably social and political theory (especially Marxism) was combined with Freudian psychoanalysis to form the highly influential discipline of Critical Theory—mostat the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research (also known as the Frankfurt School).

Notable Cultural Figures of the Weimar Era

• Christopher Isherwood
• Cabaret
• Carl von Ossietzky
• Bertolt Brecht
• Kurt Weill
• Fritz Lang
• Kurt Tucholsky
• Leontine Sagan
• Erika Mann
• Heinrich Mann
• Thomas Mann
• Max Beckmann
• Otto Dix
• George Grosz
• Alfred Döblin
• Ernst Jünger
• Erich Maria Remarque
• Alfred Rosenberg
• Marlene Dietrich
• Kaethe Kollwitz

See also

• Kultur
• Bauhaus art.