The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity

Abstract

Part 1: the Weimar republic and the continuity of German history - political turning-points, modernization and its tribulations, the demographic revolution, society at the crossroads, the halt to economic growth, four political generations. Part 2 New directions, 1918-23: old legacies and a start, 1918-19 - hopes, decisions, disappointments, the making of the constitution - openness and compromise, the peace treaty and its problems, winding up the war on the domestic front, a revolution that failed, or a compromise that would survive? the post-war crisis, 1920-23 - fulfilment and defiance, the inflationary decade, 1914-24, the republic on the defensive. Part 3 Modernization and its tensions: generation gaps and emancipatory struggles - the demographic transformation, Superfluous younger generation, the new woman, rationalism and sexuality, mother's day and male fantasies the post-war economy - rationalization and structural crisis - a trial run for corporatism, the irrational consequences of rationalization, the Sick Economy of Weimar, the attack on the Trade Union State the welfare state - expansion and crisis - the creation of the welfare state, the limits of social engineering, the Kulturstaat and its contradictions, from retrenchment to selection social milieux and political formations - social milieux in the 1920s - levelling and segmentation, socialist working-class society 150 Catholic society, white-collar workers and the old Mittelstand, the Jews - emancipation, assimilation and discrimination, the transformation of the public domain mass culture and the neue Sachlichkeit - late-Wilhelmine Avant-Garde and republican pluralism, towards a mass culture 167 radicalization and polarization, mass consumption Americanism versus Kulturkritik - for and against 179 Modern Living and the modern city, the two faces of Kulturkritik. Part 4 Deceptive stability, 1924-91: revisionist alternatives in foreign policy - reparations, Germany and the world economy, rapprochement in the west, eastern policy and its contradictions, the shift to confrontation and GroBraum policy in 1930 the illusion of domestic stability - the electoral landscape - trends and problems, varieties of coalition, the ingredients of presidential supremacy, the republic's legitimacy at stake the fragmentation of the political culture - the challenge from the elites, revolt in the provinces, the dynamism of the national socialist movement, the totalitarian temptation. Part 5 Total crisis, 1930-33: the world economic crisis - causes of the world economic crisis, the course of the crisis in Germany, the experience of crisis, the government's response the erosion of options - the path towards authoritarianism, actions and reactions, 1930-32, the end of the Weimar republic, anti-fascism paralysed, 30 January 1933. Part 6 Review - the crisis of classical modernity.