HIST 2509 A History of Germany

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HIST 2509 A History of Germany

• Lecture W3-2
• The 1920s

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TA Office Hours

• Meaghan Harris (L-Z 2 applied to final grade)
• Email emharris_at_connect.carleton.ca
• 437 Paterson Hall
• Friday January 20 100-230
• Tuesday January 24 1130-100

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TA Office Hours

• Margaret Watts (A-K 2 not applied -- I will do
  this on spreadsheet, no worries!)
• Email mwatts_at_connect.carleton.ca
• 1302 Dunton Tower
• Wednesday January 18, 25 12-1pm
• Friday January 20, 27 10-11am

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Todays Main Themes

• postwar chaos
• social, cultural features of 1920s
• what would Hitler come to decry as decadent and
  ungerman

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I. The Face of Defeat

• The revolution of 1918/19
• b. the Weimar Constitution the Basic Law
• -womens suffrage
• -universal manhood suffrage
• c.  the Versailles Diktat
• -Wilsons 14 points
• -the dictated peace
• -reparations
• -John Maynard Keynes

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September 1, 1923
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A woman feeds a stovepipe with RM From the
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Archive
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II. Political Unrest

• a. putsches and coups
• b. assassinations
• c. inflation
• d. reparations and Ruhr occupation
• e. gradual international acceptance at least for
  a time

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a. putsches and coups

• -Kapp-Putsch 1920, Luettzow Putsch
• -Beer Hall 1923
• -Thuringia
• and Saxony

Kapp-Putschists spreading leaflets in front of
Reichs Chancellery in Berlin DHM Berlin, 13. März
1920
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b. assassinations
Enzenberger
Rathenau
Eisner
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c. inflation 1923d. reparations and occupation

• -Ruhr and Rhineland
• -passive resistance
• -Rhineland Bastards
• Hands off the Ruhr!
• Anti-French placard
• by Theo Matejko
• from 1923
• DHM

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e. stabilization and acceptance 1923-29f.
integration healing of past wounds?

• -Locarno, Dawes, Young Plans
• -the infirm
• -600,000 war widows
• -2.7 million veterans
• -6 million children
• lost one or both parents
• -rift between l and r gone?

From the series, Victims of the First World War,
1933
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f. integration healing of past wounds?

• until 1924
• -hunger still a feature of life
• -pacifism vs. militarism
• (Stahlhelm, veterans organizations)
• -anti-semitism in wake of war

Germanys Children are Starving, by Käthe
Kollwitz, 1924
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III. Weimar Culture(s)

• experimentalism in art and life

Potsdamer Platz, Berlin 1925
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III. Weimar Culture(s)

• experimentalism in art and life
• -Neue Sachlichkeit (new sobriety)
• -veterans but angered by the war
• -Georg Grosz and Otto Dix
• seen as communist, Jewish, and decadent by right

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Otto Dix soldier, veteran, artist
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Anti-war themes
Otto Dix, Gas Attack, 1925
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Otto Dix, Mealtime in the Trenches, 1923/34
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Otto Dix, Mealtime in the Trenches, 1923/34
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Georg Grosz, artist, communist
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Social Critique
Georg Grosz Republican Automatons, 1920
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Social Critique
Georg Grosz Life in Berlin, 1930
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Sexuality and Modernity
Otto Dix The Metropolis, 1917
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Sexuality and Modernity
Otto Dix
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Sexuality and Modernity
Graf St. Genois dAnneaucourt Christian Schad1927
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Sexuality and Modernity
Christian Schad Self Portrait with Nude 1927
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Sexuality and Modernity
Otto Dix, The French Journalist 1927
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Bauhaus
Walter Gropius
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Film -- German Expressionism
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920