The Weimar Republic, 1924-1929: Booklet 2

A Golden Age: Myth or Reality?

Scenes from ‘Metropolis’ by Fritz Lang, 1927

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Checklist:
What the exam board says you need to know facts about (dates, people, places, examples, events, data etc.) about, and
be able to analyse, compare, debate and argue about, in Germany between 1924-1929:
- Germany’s international position;
o Stresemann's foreign policy aims and achievements
o Locarno;
o the League of Nations;
o the Treaty of Berlin;
o the end of allied occupation and the pursuit of disarmament
- Economic developments:
o Stresemann’s economic policy
o the Dawes Plan
o industry
o agriculture
o the extent of recovery
o the reparations issue
o the Young Plan
- Social developments:
o social welfare reforms;
o the development of Weimar culture;
 art,
 architecture,
 music,
 theatre,
 literature
 film;
o living standards
o lifestyles
- Political developments and the workings of democracy:
o President Hindenburg;
o parties;
o elections
o attitudes to the Republic from the elites and other social groups;
o the position of the extremists, including the Nazis and Communists; t
o the extent of political stability

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Table of Contents
1 HAD STABILITY BEEN ACHIEVED BY 1924? ................................................................................................................................ 7
1. THE BASICS...................................................................................................................................................................................... 7
2. THE DEBATES ................................................................................................................................................................................... 7
3. RECAP: WHAT HAD BEEN ACHIEVED BY 1924? ....................................................................................................................................... 8
4. SIGNS OF CONTINUING ISSUES ............................................................................................................................................................. 8
2 STRESEMANN’S FOREIGN POLICY ........................................................................................................................................... 10
1. THE BASICS.................................................................................................................................................................................... 10
2. THE DEBATES/TYPICAL ESSAY QUESTIONS ............................................................................................................................................ 11
3. THE DAWES PLAN ........................................................................................................................................................................... 12
4. THE YOUNG PLAN ........................................................................................................................................................................... 12
5. HOW MUCH DID GERMANY ACTUALLY PAY?........................................................................................................................................ 13
6. THE LOCARNO PACT ........................................................................................................................................................................ 14
7. FURTHER DIPLOMATIC PROGRESS: 1926-1929 ................................................................................................................................... 15
8. RELATIONS WITH THE USSR – THE TREATY OF BERLIN, 1926 .................................................................................................................. 16
9. DID STRESEMANN’S FOREIGN POLICY STRENGTHEN THE WEIMAR REGIME? ............................................................................................... 16
10. TAKE IT FURTHER........................................................................................................................................................................ 18
11. PRIMARY SOURCE ANALYSIS .......................................................................................................................................................... 18
3 THE ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE OF THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC’S MIDDLE YEARS ...................................................................... 20
1. THE BASICS.................................................................................................................................................................................... 20
2. THE DEBATES/TYPICAL ESSAY QUESTIONS ........................................................................................................................................... 21
3. ECONOMIC GROWTH AFTER 1923...................................................................................................................................................... 22
4. UNEVEN GROWTH AND THE LEGACY OF INFLATION ................................................................................................................................ 22
5. THE WELFARE STATE AND GOVERNMENT FINANCES ............................................................................................................................... 23
6. INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES: CASE STUDY: THE GREAT RUHR LOCKOUT OF 1928 ............................................................................................... 24
7. USING STATISTICS AND MAKING SENSE OF THE WEIMAR ECONOMY ......................................................................................................... 24
8. TAKE IT FURTHER: ........................................................................................................................................................................... 25
9. PRIMARY SOURCES ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................................................ 26
4 POLITICS IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC, 1924-29: STABILITY OR HIDDEN CRISIS? ....................................................................... 27
1. POLITICS – THE BASICS .................................................................................................................................................................... 27
2. THE DEBATES ................................................................................................................................................................................. 28
3. A PERIOD OF CALM IN GERMAN POLITICS? .......................................................................................................................................... 28
4. SYMBOLS, VALUES AND WEIMAR DEMOCRACY ..................................................................................................................................... 32
5. THE 1925 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION .................................................................................................................................................... 32
6. MILITARY, ARISTOCRATIC AND BUSINESS ELITES AND THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM ..................................................................................... 33
7. TAKE IT FURTHER: IDEAS OF A NEW GERMANY IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC: EVALUATION OF ARTHUR MOELLER VAN DEN BRUCK, DAS DRITTE REICH
(THE THIRD REICH) (1923) ....................................................................................................................................................................... 34
8. TAKE IT FURTHER ............................................................................................................................................................................ 36
9. PRIMARY SOURCE ANALYSIS GERMANY, 1924-9 .................................................................................................................................. 36

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5 SOCIETY AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE MID-WEIMAR REPUBLIC ............................................................................................. 37
1. THE BASICS.................................................................................................................................................................................... 37
2. THE DEBATES ................................................................................................................................................................................ 38
3. SOCIAL GROUPS ............................................................................................................................................................................. 38
4. EDUCATION AND YOUNG PEOPLE ....................................................................................................................................................... 39
5. THE CHANGING POSITION OF WOMEN................................................................................................................................................ 42
6. THE POSITION OF JEWS: ACCEPTANCE AND NEW ANTI-SEMITISM ............................................................................................................ 44
7. TAKE IT FURTHER ............................................................................................................................................................................ 46
8. PRIMARY SOURCE ANALYSIS .............................................................................................................................................................. 46
6 ART AND CULTURE IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC: A NEW BATTLEGROUND FOR POLITICS ......................................................... 47
1. THE BASICS.................................................................................................................................................................................... 47
2. THE DEBATES ................................................................................................................................................................................. 48
3. A CHANGING URBAN LANDSCAPE ...................................................................................................................................................... 49
4. THE JAZZ AGE ................................................................................................................................................................................ 49
5. PAINTING AND ART ......................................................................................................................................................................... 50
6.1.1 The impact of war ............................................................................................................................................................. 51
6.1.2 Dadaism ............................................................................................................................................................................ 51
6.1.3 Neue Sachlichkeit – ‘New Objectivity’ or ‘New Matter-of-Factness’ ................................................................................. 52
6. LITERATURE AND BOOKS .................................................................................................................................................................. 52
7. CINEMA ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 53
8. THE REACTION TO CULTURAL MODERNISM .......................................................................................................................................... 54
9. TAKE IT FURTHER ............................................................................................................................................................................ 55
7 CONSOLIDATION .................................................................................................................................................................... 56
1. WAS 1924-1928 A GOLDEN AGE FOR THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC? ............................................................................................................ 56
2. KEY DEBATES ................................................................................................................................................................................. 56
3. PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS ............................................................................................................................................................. 58

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1 HAD STABILITY BEEN ACHIEVED BY 1924?
1. THE BASICS

2. THE DEBATES
There’s a really important debate about the period of stability that Germany appeared to enter into during this period.
a) Was it real, offering a genuine chance for Germany to establish a functioning democracy, and re-enter ‘normal’
international relations?
b) Was is superficial (or ‘ethereal’, or sham), in which the trauma of war, defeat and hyperinflation merely caused
a pause in hostilities?
The debate over whether that stability was real (a ‘golden age’) or a sham will run through this whole booklet

Again and again, we’ll be coming back to this question, and at some point, you’ll have to organise your information in a
table like this:

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 3. RECAP: WHAT HAD BEEN ACHIEVED BY 1924?
- Revisit chapter 11 of booklet one

Further Knowledge: The Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold

Right wing and nationalist armed groups, like the Stahlhelm or the SA, as well as the left-wing Communist Red
Front Fighters had continued to radicalize and intensify the political struggle in Germany. The Reichsbanner was
initially formed in reaction to the far right's "Beer Hall" Putsch and far left's rebellions in Saxony and Thuringia,
which had taken place at the end of 1923. On 22 February 1924 members of the SPD, the German Centre Party, the
German Democratic Party and trade unionists established the Reichsbanner. However, the proportion of Social
Democrats in the membership clearly outweighed all others, with estimates of up to 90 per cent.
Reichsbanner was a veterans' federation, in which former soldiers of the First World War enlisted their military
experience in the service of the republic. It thus saw its main task as the defence of the Weimar Republic against
enemies from the National Socialist, monarchist and Communist camps. Members saw themselves as guardians of
the inheritance of Germany's democratic tradition, going back to the Revolutions of 1848, and of the constitutional
national colours: black, red and gold.
It proved to be hugely popular, as well as willing to use force to tackle communists, those on the extreme right, and
monarchists. They were a paramilitary organisation, with regular marches and parades, with pipes and drums to
march with and sing patriotic songs. They had well over 1 million members up until the end of the Weimar
Republic.
This is really important evidence that:
a) Outside the Reichstag, different parties could cooperate.
b) There was mass support for the values of the Weimar Republic.
c) Ex-soldiers didn’t just join the Freikorps; later, after the Freikorps disbanded (by 1921), they also joined the
Reichsbanner Black-Red-Gold.
This final fact raises a question: were the Freikorps entirely right-wing in their outlook? We’ll never know, but
probably, many of the Reichsbanner members had defended the Republic earlier in the Freikorps. Making a point
like this in an exam shows that you can see where the ‘grey areas’ are in our knowledge about the past.
See this lecture for more on this: https://www.massolit.io/courses/the-weimar-republic-1918-33/the-politics-of-
republicanism

4. SIGNS OF CONTINUING ISSUES

Stresemann’s Resignation as Chancellor
Because Stresemann had suspended the legitimate SPD (and Communist) governments of Thuringia and Saxony, the
SPD resigned from the government in November 1923, and forced Stresemann from office as Chancellor.
This is hugely important, because:
1) It is evidence of the instability of Weimar politics, and the difficulty in forming a coalition government. You
could use it as evidence in an exam answer.
2) It was the last time that the SPD would take part in government until 1928, and often exams ask about the
stability (real or imagined) of the middle years of the Weimar Republic. This would be good evidence to discuss
whether the stability was real or imagined. This was a major blow to the Weimar Republic:
a. The SPD was the party who had, effectively, founded the Republic. Now it was in perpetual opposition.
b. The SPD was always the largest party in the 1920s, which meant that governments had to be formed
out of small parties, which made them even more unstable.
c. Many on the right of politics argued that it showed that:
i. Democracy was a weak system.
ii. Socialists and socialism were unfit to be in power.

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 d. It left SPD supporters without a voice in government.
The new government was led by Wilhelm Marx, the leader of the Centre Party. He was chancellor from 1923-25, and
1926-28. He, and President Ebert, appointed Stresemann as Foreign Minister in the new Administration.
A more positive way of looking at the period is that the Marx government was long lasting and Stresemann’s long term
as Foreign Minister provided a much-needed element of continuity to the Weimar Republic.
Unresolved Problems
• The initial response to the ending of passive resistance was unrest (most notably the Munich Putsch). Although
Ebert’s use of Article 48 was effective in bringing the crisis under control, discontent did not go away.
• Stresemann was forced to adopt unpopular policies – such as a rise in taxation - in order to balance the budget.
• The economic problems explored in Booklet 1 did not go away overnight. Those who had lost their savings in the
collapse of the old currency did not gain anything from the introduction of a new currency. Additionally, the end of
cheap credit led to an increase in the number of companies that went bankrupt to over 6000 in 1924 (from 233 in
1923.)
• Permanent stabilisation of Germany’s economy would require a settlement of the reparations dispute. In
November 1923 Stresemann asked the Allies’ Reparations Committte to set up a committee of financial experts to
address Germany’s repayment concerns. However, accomodations from the allies would require that Germany
pursue a policy of fulfillment – show of good faith in trying to carry out the pecae terms properly.

Look at the table (right)

What choices do you think would
be best for Germany?
Would they also be the most
popular?
What problems could pursuing a
conciliatory foreign policy cause?
Remember: It was actually Wirth
(Chancellor from 1921-22) who
first developed a policy of
Fulfilment. What happened to his
Foreign Minister?)
Recap table 12.2 from booklet 1.
Which of the threats to the
Weimar Republic that you
identified still remain?
How stable do you think the
Weimar Republic was going into
1924?

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2 STRESEMANN’S FOREIGN POLICY
1. THE BASICS
• Unlike many nationalists, Streseman recognised that Germany had been militarily defeated and not simply ‘stabbed
in the back’ and understood the circumstances that had brought Germany to its knees in 1923.
• Like all nationalists, he aimed to free Germany from the limitations of Versailles and to restore his country to the
status of a great power. However, having ruled out offensive action, his only choice was one of diplomatic
fulfilment: the policy of conforming to the terms of the Versailles Treaty and encouraging cooperation and peace,
while aiming for moderate revision of the terms. His foreign policy reflected:
o A desire for cooperation with France and friendship with the USSR and Britain.
o A desire to play on Germany’s vital importance to world trade in order to earn the goodwill and cooperation
of Britain and the USA.

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 2. THE DEBATES/TYPICAL ESSAY QUESTIONS
Historians are divided about whether to view Stresemann as
• an honest man in difficult circumstances trying to make the best of a situation
• or whether they should view him more cynically: a German nationalist, helping the Wehrmacht (German army),
determined to break the Treaty of Versailles and always wishing to threaten the new countries of Eastern
Europe to re-grow a German empire.
Typical questions (if you want to practise planning them!) might be:
- ‘The domestic consequences of Stresemann’s policies were disastrous between 1923-29’. Do you agree?
- ‘Stresemann’s achievements were fundamentally economic in nature.’ Do you agree?
- ‘Stresemann’s most conspicuous success was his ability to convince the Allies to revise the Treaty of Versailles.’
Do you agree?
- ‘By 1929 Germany had returned to the community of nations as a full and equal member.’ Assess the validity of
this view.
- ‘Stresemann’s reputation as a man of peace is misplaced.’ Do you agree?

Was Stresemann really a good European?

In 1926 Stresemann was awarded the Nobel Peace prize (along with his British and French counterparts Aristide Briand
and Austen Chamberlain.) Three years later, he died suddenly of a stroke at the age of 51. His obituary in the socialist
newspaper Vorwarts concluded that ‘his achievement was in line with the ideas of the international socialist movement.
He saw that you can only serve your people by understanding other peoples. To serve collapsed Germany he set out in
the path of understanding…He covered the long distance from being a nationalist politician of conquest to being a
champion of world peace.’ For a long time, this interpretation of Stresemann was widely accepted.
However, Stresemann’s approach has come under heavy criticism from historian Detlev Peukert. He argues that
Stresemann remained a committed nationalist, and wanted to revise Germany’s borders in the east. This was, for
Peukert, a disaster because:
a) It set a disastrous precedent for the future.
b) It kept some Germans fantasising about violent acquisition of territory.
c) By remaining threatening to countries in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, Stresemann wasted the
potential for Germany to be the dominant power in this region through economic and diplomatic means.
Germany should have been the natural leader and protector of these countries, not a threat.
On the other hand, it should be noted that some key evidence about Stresemann’s goals were secret at the time, and
not shared widely with the German public. And when Stresemann died in October 1929, a still more aggressive foreign
policy was pursued – and anyway, the global crash of 1928-29 changed a lot.
Did Stresemann’s foreign policy strengthen the Weimar Republic?
Another key debate relates to Stresemann’s ability to restore faith in the Weimar System itself – although as foreign
minister, this was not really his role.
• His basic hope that successful diplomacy would strengthen the economy and thereby lead to the ability to
revise the Versailles treaty never won widespread domestic support for the regime. There is considerable
evidence that his policy failed to rally Germans to the regime, because the concessions he gained were not
sufficiently dramatic; rather they were pragmatic and subtle, and allowed gradual change take place. In fact,
they could be presented as negligible, symbolic, and trapping Germany in a longer period of servitude. To many
Germans, especially on the right, Stresemann's policy of fulfilment of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles was
seen as capitulation. Many Germans chose to regard him as simply the enforcer of the Treaty of Versailles. To
them, Stresemann’s concessions achieved little because Germany remained either occupied, subject to foreign
interference and disarmed. Even the Young Plan was opposed because it confirmed that Germany still have to
pay reparations. Nationalist groups mounted a major campaign to force the government to reject the Young
Plan, using the Constitution (which, ironically, most of them despised) to arrange a referendum on its

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 acceptance. The campaign helped make Hitler a nationally known politicians. His fierce condemnation of the
plan contributed to the surge in NSDAP support in the 1930 elections, when both high unemployment and the
economic slump were blamed on reparations and the Young Plan.
• However, it is important to note that only 5.8 million Germans (or 14%) voted to reject the Young Plan.
Additionally, whilst it is perhaps true that Stresemann’s achievements were too subtle to be widely celebrated
by the majority of Germans, when the dire situation Stresemann inherited in 1923 is taken into consideration, it
is hard not to be impressed by Stresemann’s foreign policy which Kolb (1982) judged to be ‘astonishingly
successful.’
Perhaps a fair conclusion is that by 1929 Stresemann’s policy had not had time to establish itself and generate sufficient
support to survive the difficult circumstances of the 1930s.

3. THE DAWES PLAN

After Stresemann made clear that Germany would follow a policy of fulfilment (a really important word), there was
room for Stresemann as foreign minister to request a meeting to discuss how Germany could recover from the
hyperinflation. In November 1923 Stresemann asked the Allies’ Reparations Committte to set up a committee of
financial experts to address Germany’s repayment concerns. Remember: the allies wanted Germany’s economy to
recover, otherwise they would get no reparations at all, and Britain and France would struggle to repay US war debts.
In April 1924 a committee chaired by American Charles Dawes submitted its recommendations on Germany’s reparation
payments. The Dawes plan, while not reducing the overall reparations bill, proposed that it should be paid over a longer
period.
- Germany was to make annual payments of 1bn marks (£50 million pounds) in the first five years. At that point
(1929), Germany would raise its payments to 2.5bn marks (£125 million pounds) a year.
- To ensure payment was made, the Allies were given some control (through a Control Commission) over German
banks and German railways – the central features of the German economy.
- Right wing parties presented this agreement as worse than what had gone before, because the allies now had
control of aspects of domestic German life (railways and banks), and because Germany would be paying for
longer.
- In August 1924, the Reichstag voted to accept the Dawes Plan.
So, by August 1924, Stresemann and his team had achieved several things:
1. They had stabilised the currency – this meant that economic growth could resume.
2. For the first time since the First World War, Germany’s economic problems received international recognition.
3. They had stabilised relationships with the Allies: Germany was now a negotiating partner, rather than being
treated merely by brute force (such as the military occupation of the Ruhr). Once the Allies accepted the
principle that Germany was a negotiating partner, more opportunities opened up for Stresemann as foreign
minister.
4. France promised to evacuate the Ruhr during 1925

Stresemann recognised that the longer the time frame that the loan repayments were supposed to be made over, the
more opportunities there would surely be for Germany to revise the payment sums. However, contemporaries did not
interpret Stresemann's policies in this way. The Dawes Plan was unpopular with German nationalists.

4. THE YOUNG PLAN

In February 1929, a committee chaired by American Owen Young met to discuss the final plan to reparations. The very
existence of this meeting shows several really important things. Firstly, it shows, just as the Dawes Plan had showed,
that the USA did not walk away from Europe and remain in splendid isolation even though Wilson had left office.
Secondly, it shows that German politicians (and Stresemann in particular) were exceptionally successful at revising the
Treaty of Versailles.
In this final settlement Germany was to pay a total of $713 million US dollars over 59 years; this was in total a 90%
reduction in reparations from the initial claims of the Allies. Allied control over Germany’s railways and banking system
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were to be dropped. The Young Plan was signed in June 1929. Stresemann’s commitment to policy of fulfilment had
rehabilitated Germany in the international arena, and it was his diplomatic skills which enables Germany to plausibly
apply for yet another revision in 1929.

5. HOW MUCH DID GERMANY ACTUALLY PAY?

How much did the Allies demand?
You may come across a bewildering variety of figures
on the amount of reparations. This may be because
they are in different currencies, but also because the
calculations themselves were very complex and
differed over time.
Versailles 1919: No sum fixed
1921: 226,000 million gold marks over 42 years.
Reduced in April 1921 to 132,000 million gold marks
(50,000 million marks plus 6% interest over 50 years
followed by a second phase payment of 82,000 million
marks.) These annual payments were estimated to be
around 7% of Germany’s national income.
1924 and 1929: Reparations organised by the Dawes
and Young Plan (right)
1931-32: Payments suspended for one year s part of a general moratorium on debts. The next year, at the Lausanne
Conference, agreement was reached on a final payment of 3,000 million marks, to be paid in a one-off payment in 1935.
This was never paid.

What form did reparations take?

It is important to note that reparations took the form
of payment in kind, for example gold and
manufactured products, and money in the form of
gold, but not paper money. The allies insisted on
things with fixed values. The German government
bought the materials from German manufacturers
and gave these to foreign governments, primarily
France (about 50% of the total), Britain (20%), Italy
(10%) and Belgium (8%). Inflation within Germany
had eradicated the debts of many people, particularly
wealthier people who owned houses with mortgages,
or business people who had taken out loans to buy
plant or machinery. However, this did not take place on international level.

The balance of reparation payments and loans.

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Between 1924 and 1929, some
25.5 billion marks flowed into
Germany in the form of loans
and investments (to put this
into context in the same
period Germany paid 22.9
billion marks in reparations)
This investment in Germany –
particularly from the USA -
continued a trend which had
already began earlier in the 1920s. Additionally, investors were attracted by the prospects for investment in a country
whose economic development was carefully watched over by Allied representatives. However, a long term problem was
that much of Germany’s recovery was dependent on these external loans, and they were not all loans to the central
government. US loans were given to large German corporations such as AEG, BASF, and IG Metal (79 firms in total) and
also to municipalities (cities) and states who used these to pay for their generous and experimental housing
programmes, and other improvements, like roadbuilding, hospitals, and new transport network. Remember – the
Weimar Constitution gave a lot of freedom to states in terms of spending – but they lacked accountability. The central
government were limited in their ability to control the level of debt which Germany was incurring.
Task: Exam-ready numbers
You need to know one or two examples from these statistics to be able to use in the exam. You could pick some
numbers here that seems really memorable to you for some reason and use those statistics as your evidence and
examples. You don’t need to know all of them! You could just note down the ‘net’ cost of reparations (the difference
between payments out and loans/investments in).

Examples Year(s) Year(s) Year(s)

Reparations

Balance between money in

and money out:

6. THE LOCARNO PACT

Stresemann continued to fear that Anglo-French
friendship could lead to a military alliance In order
to ease this concern, Stresemann proposed an
international security pact for Germany’s western
frontiers. France was at first hesitant but Britain
and the USA both backed the idea.
In October 1924, a series of treaties was signed
which became known as the Locarno Pact. The
main points were:
- The Rhineland Pact: A mutual guarantee
agreement accepted the French-German
and Belgian-German borders. These terms
were guaranteed by Britain and Italy. All
five countries renounced the use of force,
except in self-defence. The
demilitarisation of the Rhineland was
recognised as permanent.

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 - The Arbitration Pact: Arbitration treaties between Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia agreed to settle future
disputes peacefully through a conciliation committee (but the existing frontiers on the east were not accepted
as final) France signed treaties of ‘mutual guarantee’ with Poland and Czechoslovakia. These said that France
would make sure that Germany did not break the agreement above.

Germany lost nothing by signing the Locarno Pact as it had no sound national claim
to Alsace-Lorraine. On the other hand, Stresemann also won advances on the
evacuation of the Rhineland. The Locarno Treaty significantly limited France’s
freedom of action since the occupation of the Ruhr or possible annexation of the
Rhineland was no longer possible. Additionally, by establishing a sold basis for
Franco-German understanding, Stresemann had lessened France’s need to find allies
in eastern Europe.
Conversely, the Locarno Treaty was a major setback for Poland as Stresemann had
deliberately refused to confirm the frontiers in the east. Stresemann also made clear
that the issue of German minorities living abroad was one which the Allies would
have to come back to at some point in the future and the Allies accepted this. This
represented a key triumph for Stresemann and his nationalist ambitions, and would
also have key implications for the future.
We know now, but contemporaries did not know, that Stresemann retained many of
his conservative goals from the First World War. He looked to the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk as being the ultimate expression of Germany’s ambitions in the east
(remember: in the Treaty of Brest-Listovsk with Lenin’s Soviet Union, March 1918,
demanded 6bn gold marks in reparations, and Russia was forced to secede extensive
territories such as Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to Germany). It is important
to remember however, that contemporaries were unaware of this “nationalist”
aspect to his foreign policy.
Entry into the League of Nations was required in order for the Locarno Pact to come
into operation. This was a positive as the more organisations in which negotiation
was conducted with Germany, then the more opportunities Germany would have to
revise and talk down the reparations bill and the features of the Versailles treaty
which it objected to. Stresemann insisted that if Germany was going to enter the
League of Nations, it would have to be a key member of the most important part of
the League of Nations, the council. This recognised Germany’s status as a great
power amongst other great powers.

7. FURTHER DIPLOMATIC PROGRESS: 1926-1929

Stresemann hoped that further advances would follow Locarno, such as the restoration of full German rule over the
Saar and the Rhineland, a reduction in reparations and a revision of the eastern frontier. There was further progress,
however it remained limited.
• 1926: League of Nations: Germany was invited to join the League and was immediately recognised as a permanent
member of the Council.
• 1928: Kellog-Briand Pact: German signed this declaration that outlawed ‘war as an instrument of national policy.’
However, keeping the army in a state of well-trained readiness was seemingly also a key goal of German foreign
policy. Germany had also sponsored a Preparatory Commission for a Disarmament Conference upon its entry to the
League of Nations in 1926, but nothing serious came of it. So the Kellog-Briand Pact was a symbol of cooperation
rather than of any real practical effect.
• 1929: Evacuation of the Rhineland. The Allies agreed to evacuate the Rhineland earlier than intended (1933). The
Young Plan of the same year revised the scheme of payments for reparations further (see section 2.4.)

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 8. RELATIONS WITH THE USSR – THE TREATY OF BERLIN, 1926
The terms of the Treaty of Rapallo were reaffirmed by the Treaty of Berlin in April 1926, in which Germany also
promised to remain neutral in the event of Russia being involved in a war. This reduced strategic fears on Germany’s
Eastern Front and placed even more pressure on Poland to give way to German demands for frontier changes. It also
opened the possibility of a large commercial market and increased military cooperation.
The secret clause of the Treaty of Rapallo was carried forward into the Treaty of Berlin. This enabled the German
military to practise in the use of heavy weaponry in the territory of the USSR (another example of the on-going
continuity in the role of the military, acting as a ‘state within a state’). The German army also agreed to train officers of
the red Army. This was in contravention to the Versailles treaty, and showed that these two outcast nations were
prepared to co-operate slightly to improve their position. This shows that Stresemann was perhaps not quite as focused
on maintaining the Treaty of Versailles as appeared at the time.

9. DID STRESEMANN’S FOREIGN POLICY STRENGTHEN THE WEIMAR REGIME?

Historians have generally regarded Stresemann’s foreign policy in favourable
terms and the longevity of his term as Foreign Minister (by Weimar standards!)
gives some indication of his success at walking the seemingly impossible
tightrope between convincing France, Britain and the USA that he was a ‘good
European’ whilst not becoming so unpopular with the nationalists within
Germany that he was forced out of office. However, as you can see from these
sources, serious objections were made to a number of his policies E.g.
• The Dawes Plan – right wing parties objected to the allies having control of
aspects of domestic German life (railways and banks), and the fact that
Germany would be paying for longer.
• The Locarno Pact and entry into the League of Nations – many nationalists
objected to Stresemann’s conciliatory tone and willingness for cooperation
and acceptance of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (though we now
understand he was seeking to revise the terms.)
• The Young Plan – the DNVP and NSDAP worked together to promote a
referendum against the Young Plan (though only 5.8% of Germans voted to reject it.)
As you will see from the section on politics, in many respects Stresemann’s personality was crucial to holding things
together. As source 4.7 shows he managed to win the trust of at least some on the left and he kept the DVP firmly in
the centre ground – once he died it moved back to the right. Support (or grudging acceptance) of Stresemann’s foreign
policy was also contingent on Germany’s economic position. Once the economy started to run into serious difficulties
from 1928 onwards, politics started to move to extremes again.

16
17
 10. TAKE IT FURTHER
The Hiden chapters on Foreign Policy and Economics and Reparations are useful for setting this period in a broader
context of the whole period 1919-1929, as is the section on Foreign policy in Lee’s overview text on Weimar Germany.
There are a number of useful articles on Stresemann in the History Today archive. Wright’s Stresemann and Weimar
which is in the library folder gives a good introduction to the Stresemann’s debate.
Evidence which was secret during Stresemann’s lifetime was published after his death – and you can read about it in
‘Conan Fischer – The Stresemann Memoirs Scandal, 1932’. It’s in the library folder.

11. PRIMARY SOURCE ANALYSIS

With reference to sources 1, 2 and 3, and your understanding of the historical context, assess the value of these
sources to a historian studying the aims and achievements of Stresemann as foreign minister 1923-9.

18
19
3 THE ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE OF THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC’S MIDDLE YEARS
1. THE BASICS
Historians are deeply divided about whether there was a ‘return to prosperity’ between 1924-29, or it was just a
continuation of crisis, but hidden by superficial achievements.

Find a statistic from this chapter to support each of the points in the chart below

20
 2. THE DEBATES/TYPICAL ESSAY QUESTIONS
The big debate in this topic is whether the economic recovery was real, or whether it was an illusion.
It is often claimed that the introduction of the new currency – the Rentenmark – and the measures of the Dawes Plan
ushered in five years of economic growth and affluence. For many Germans looking back from the late 1920s it seemed
as if Germany had made a remarkable recovery.
However, the fact that the five years of ‘prosperity’ following the economic chaos of 1922-3 ended with the Great
Depression of 1929-1933 has led to claims that economic recovery was extremely superficial.
Typical questions for you to practice planning:
- ‘We should not view 1923-24 as a turning point in the economic history of the Weimar Republic; the
fundamental problems remained the same until 1929.’ Do you agree?
- ‘The German economy between 1924-29 recovered sufficiently to quell serious social and political conflict.’
Assess the validity of this view.
- ‘There was no “Golden Era” of the Weimar economy.’ Assess the validity of this view.
- ‘The achievements of the Weimar economy between 1924-29, particularly in the field of improving standards of
living and welfare, were remarkable.’ Were they?
- ‘The key weakness of the Weimar economy between 1924-29 was its reliance on debt.’ Was it?
There is also debate about who was responsible for the economic problems in the Weimar Republic
1. Responsibility lies with the government reliance on Debt: and the people who took on debt. This line of
argument emphasises that in all sorts of ways the German state lived beyond its means, and made the German
economy endlessly dependent on loan after loan after loan after loan. The Weimar Constitution gave such
enormous autonomy to the municipalities and the states (so maybe the constitution helped promote debt?)
that they could take on debts which the central bank and central government could not manage, and might not
even know about. The main political parties refused to engage with the problems of raising taxes to pay for new
welfare systems and so they were partly to blame for creating debt. This meant that huge amounts of money
were always going to interest payments, rather than investments in real things that make economies grow. The
lack of investment in the economy, so this argument goes, is one of the reasons why unemployment was always
above 1 million people. According to this argument, the recession began well before the Wall Street Crash of
1929, which should be viewed merely as the final stage in the drama. Also, in this interpretation, the working-
class share some of the blame, if that is the right word, by insisting on having a decent standard of living which
the rich refused to pay for responsibly.
2. Responsibility lies with German business leaders: In this interpretation, historians, typically left-wing
historians, emphasise that large businesses benefited very greatly from the hyperinflation, and then clubbed
together to form cartels (groups) in a process known as cartelisation. This allowed them to keep prices
artificially high, by forming clubs of rich businesses which prevented competition, and discouraged investment.
To many businessmen, having high unemployment above 1 million people was a good idea, because it meant
that they would always have a pool of desperately poor unemployed people to find labour from, and it would
be very difficult for trade unions to campaign to raise wages. Like the ‘debt theory’, this theory also emphasises
that the German governments played a role: Businesses did not do it on their own; the government encouraged
cartelisation, and gave all sorts of subsidies to big business and protected old-fashioned, inefficient agriculture
on the Junker estates. Secondly, also in line with the ‘debt theory’, this line of argument also emphasises that
unemployment was caused in part by lack of investment, although in this case, these historians argue that the
lack of investment was caused by cartelisation and rich businesses profiting from the war and hyperinflation.
3. Responsibility lies with Industrial conflict: ordinary Germans, rich and poor, were responsible. Historians
working in local archives that emphasise the day-to-day experience of ordinary Germans in dozens of different
towns and cities across the Weimar Republic have emphasised that the major problems in the economy were
caused by a stand-off between employers and workers. Workers demanded ever larger pay rises and shorter
working days; employers tried to cut wages, safety at work, and welfare benefit contributions. This led to huge
amounts of strike action on the part of trade unions, and lockouts on the part of employers where employers
21
 would lock factory gates and stop workers coming to work until, basically, they surrendered to the employers
demands the lower wages on longer hours.

3. ECONOMIC GROWTH AFTER 1923

By 1928, production levels in heavy industry had reached those of 1913. This was the result of more efficient methods,
particularly in coal-mining and steel manufacture, and also because of increased investment. German industry
underwent ‘rationalisation’ replacing antiquated methods and machinery new ideas and technologies which increased
production.
Cartels allowed industry to lower costs by grouping different companies together e.g. Vereinigte Stahlwerke combined
the coal, iron and steel interests of Germany’s great industrial companies and grew to control nearly half of all
production. By 1925, there were around 3000 cartel arrangements in operation, including 90% of Germany’s coal and
steel industry. Many industries also received states subsidies. From 1925, Germany was once again allowed to protect
its industry using tariffs.
Foreign bankers were particularly attracted by Germany’s high interest rates. There was huge investment from the USA
(see 2.5)
Between 1925 and 1929 German exports rose by 40%. Hourly wage rates rose every year from 1924 to 1930. In 1927,
real wages increased by 9% and, in 1928, they rose by a further 12%.

4. UNEVEN GROWTH AND THE LEGACY OF INFLATION

The effects of inflation were long-lasting. The general effect had been to transfer wealth from the thrifty, cautious
sections of the lower middle class to industrialists and financiers. In the period 1924-29 state employees and civil
servants, savers and tradesmen, and the urban Mittelstand, now saw organised workers making gains, diminishing the
status gap between the middle class and the proletariat. This caused deep anxiety and resentment against a political
system that could narrow this status. The politics of status, envy and greed are always powerful politics.
Pressure groups, including a whole political party, were set up demanding the revaluation of old loans and
compensation for those who had lost money in the hyperinflation. A lottery was established to see who would benefit
from compensation each year. This gave creditors hope without ruining government finances, but it also set up huge
stores of frustration and disappointment amongst those who were not lucky enough to win.
Debts were generally reassessed at 15% of their original value, a compromise which upset both creditors, who only got
part of their money back, and debtors, who thought they had got away freely during the hyperinflation but now had to
find money to pay off some remaining part of their debts. The long-running saga of revaluation weakened the Weimar
Republic, since it kept bitterness over hyperinflation alive.
Although after 1923, the economy improved, its rate of growth was erratic. In 1926 there was a downturn and
unemployment grew. It never fell below 1.3 million in this period and by 1929 averaged 1.9 million (even before the
effects of the USA’s financial crisis began to be felt.) There was huge conflicts between employers and trade unions
which many people at the time interpreted in terms of desperate crisis. For many on the left of German politics, too
little had changed in the new Weimar Republic, and the former wealthy industrialists who had also benefited from
hyperinflation were continuing to exploit workers.
Although industry appeared to have made a good recovery, broader structural issues limited growth. Traditionally,
Germany had relied on its ability to export to achieve economic growth, but world trade did not return to pre-war
levels. German exports were hindered by protective tariffs in many parts of the world. Additionally, Germany had lost
valuable resources in territories such as Alsace-Lorraine. Therefore, the German balance of trade (the difference in
value between exports and imports) was regularly in deficit.
The picture of agriculture was far worse than the situation in industry. There was a world surplus of grain and prices fell
dramatically, affecting both large estates and small farms. Many farmers were struggling to make a profit and support
from the government in the form of financial aid and tarrifs only helped partially to reduce the problem. By the late
1920s income per head in agriculture was 44% below the national average – and the peasantry made up 1.3 of the

22
national population. Indebtedness and bankruptcies grew and there were outbreaks of peasant violence against
evictions when they could not pay their debts. In 1928, in what has been called “the farmer’s revenge”, many farmers
voted for the Nazi party. Over time, NSDAP support was always higher in the rural North and East (that is to stay
Protestant) agricultural areas and small towns in the countryside, than in large cities in urban north and west (or in the
Catholic south).
It is also important that the most backward, most indebted parts of the agricultural system were the old Estates of
Prussia in eastern Germany. It is also significant that these estates tended to be owned by very large landowners of the
aristocratic Junker class. Thus, not only were the Junkers threatened politically from their traditional positions of
authority by the Weimar revolution, but the types of economic crisis which would strike industry after 1928 and 29
were persistent features of Junker economic life in the agricultural respect in the mid-1920s.
Spending was no longer financed by simply printing money. Expenditure and the circulation of money were tightly
controlled. These were orthodox policies but as a result there were insufficient resources to finance the ambitious
welfare state built into the Weimar Constitution. Which causes in the Weimar Constitution advocated or even
committed the government to extensive welfare spending? Much of this shortfall was financed by debt, often short-
term debt, and often debt taken up by municipalities and states and so in a way hidden from the central accounts of the
Weimar Republic itself. Historian Eberhard Kolb argues in The Weimar Republic that the German economy was
precarious even before the depression of 1928-29. Even Stresemann admitted in 1928: ‘Germany is dancing on a
volcano. If the short-term credits are called in [i.e., if a bank decides not to renew the credits and demand their money
back] then a large section of our economy would collapse.’

5. THE WELFARE STATE AND GOVERNMENT FINANCES

The principles of the welfare state had been
written into the Weimar Constitution and made it
extremely hard for Weimar governments to
balance the budget. This had been achieved in
1924 but by 1928 public expenditure had reached
26% of GNP, which was double the pre-war
figure. State governments, often using foreign
loans, improved hospitals and in addition,
approximately 40% of federal government
expenditure went on war related pensions to invalids, widows and orphans, in all over 2.5 million people. A further
major advancing welfare provision was made in 1927, when the social insurance scheme was extended to protect over
17 million workers in the inventive unemployment. Although such measures probably strengthen support amongst
many ordinary Germans for the Weimar Republic, the regime also suffer from exaggerated expectations, and when
financial difficulties struck in 1928 and unemployment rose sharply, there was no possible hope of paying generous
unemployment benefits to so many people.
Many historians have concluded that the
welfare system, lack of political realism, and an
unwillingness to compromise throughout
political groupings either to raise taxes or to
reduce benefits on the part of the Weimar
political parties, built in a superficially attractive
but ultimately catastrophic feature of the
middle years of the Weimar Republic. As costs
soared, the welfare system also needed a large
and expensive bureaucracy to administer it.
Those administering benefits at a local level
used many devices to keep expenditure down
including means tests and snoopers to check
that claimants were not cheating the system.

23
Those in need of support, including large numbers of war veterans and their families, felt that they were being
humiliated and insulted and therefore their support for the Weimar Republic was undermined.
Welfare reform also affected many wealthier people’s attitudes towards the Weimar Republic, and it might surprise you
to learn that in fact it was the lower middle classes who often objected and most strenuously to the generosity of the
welfare state. While wealthy industrialists and landowners objected to the high tax burdens that welfare spending
would theoretically place on them, members of the lower-middle-class objected to the closing of the status between
them and manual workers and other members of the working classes. The resulting high taxation and comparative
redistribution of resources away from wealthy people reinforce many people’s suspicion of the new democratic system.
Before the slump of 1928 and 29 the eight-hour limit to the working day was changed to a ten-hour limit to help
employers. The arbitration system set up under the Weimar Republic protected workers but aroused the resentment of
employers who complained at “a political wage”, but these wages were set by arbitrators appointed by government
wanting to win working-class votes. In 1928, Ruhr industrialists rejected an arbitration award and locked out 250,000
workers in a clear attempt to break the power of the unions and defeat government-enforced compulsory arbitration.
The government did eventually arrange a compromise, but the original award had been undermined. This typified the
growing tension between employers and workers that was to become acute with the impractical depression.

6. INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES: CASE STUDY: THE GREAT RUHR LOCKOUT OF 1928

In 1928, a dispute between coal and steel workers in the Ruhr Valley, and their employers, went to compulsory
arbitration in a tribunal. The tribunal decided that some of the workers’ demands should be met. Importantly, the SPD
had finally decided to return to government after the election of June 1928, so possibly the tribunal felt that they should
give in to the workers’ demands or they might be given anyway by the new ‘Grand Coalition’ government of the SPD,
the Zentrum, DDP and DVP.
In 1927, the civil service had been given a substantial pay rise. So, in 1928, the DMV (Deutscher Matallarbeiterverband,
German Metal Workers’ Union) also submitted a large pay claim. The SPD had done exceptionally well in the June 1928
election; the Zentrum and DVP did poorly. However, the coal and steel industry were doing poorly; profits and
productivity were not rising fast. The employers, rather than accepting the result of the official arbitrator (maybe they
could not?) locked their factories, rather than accept the results of the pay award. This was important because:
a) It showed businesses coming together to undermine the legal institutions of the Weimar Republic (arbitration in
industrial disputes was a legal requirement).
b) It showed workers insisting on pay rises which were probably beyond the capacity to pay.
c) It showed wealthy people (employers) deliberately setting out to resist improving working people’s lives when
previously (in the award to civil servants) they had helped wealthier, middle-class people.

Larry Peterson:
The decision of German employers in the Rhenish-Westphalian iron and steel industry to lock out workers in November
1928 rather than accept binding arbitration of a dispute over wages marked, in retrospect, the beginning of the
dissolution of the Weimar Republic. The strongest group of German capitalists, from the centre of German heavy
industry, frontally attacked the governing parliamentary coalition. It did so to stop the extension of socioeconomic
reforms, if possible, to reverse those that had been instituted since 1918, and above all to challenge that policy of state
intervention in economic affairs which regulated class

7. USING STATISTICS AND MAKING SENSE OF THE WEIMAR ECONOMY

a) First label the graphs below to indicate which social and economic groups are primarily affected by each
particular set of statistics? For example, some might impact on the working classes, farmers, business people, all
Germans or the government.
b) What evidence can you find for an optimistic picture of the German economy between 1924-29?
c) What evidence can you find for a pessimistic picture of the German economy between 1924-1929?

24
 d) Does the evidence from this economic data support the idea that the Weimar Republic favoured the working
class at the expense of the wealthiest or the elites?

8. TAKE IT FURTHER:
Both Hiden and Lee have interesting and relatively brief interpretations of the economy between 1924 and 1929. For a
more challenging read see the Economy chapter of Peukert’s ‘The Weimar Republic.’

25
 9. PRIMARY SOURCES ANALYSIS
With reference to these sources and your understanding of the historical context, assess the value of these sources to
an historian studying the extent of the economic recovery by 1928?

SOURCE 1
‘If we compare the present position with that of four years ago we see a very great advance in regard to the
economic development of the country as a whole.
There has been a far-reaching reorganisation and rationalisation of the industrial system of Germany; the standard of
living of the masses of the people has appreciably risen, and in the case of a great part of the working-class has again
reached or surpassed the pre-war level. The marked fluctuations of the first few years have made way for a steadier
line of development. Those who foretold a rapid and serious depression under-estimated the country’s economic
power.
At the same time there are still considerable branches of the national economy which have had an inadequate share
in the general recovery. The position of agriculture, though here and there improvement is apparent, remains on the
whole less favourable than the rest of the national economy.
Whatever turn the future may take, it is certain that there is a serious temporary shortage of capital. The difficulties
encountered in securing long-term loans have led to a growing reliance on short-term borrowing’
An extract from the report of the Commissioner of the Reichsbank, 1928. This report was written to inform
government ministers and business leaders about the state of the economy

SOURCE 2
Rationalization created its own market. Since the whole of German industry was being renovated technologically,
since new plants were being installed and the old reorganized, and new machines were being put to work, the
demand for building materials, machines, tools, and steel was very high, The branches of industry specializing in the
means of production experienced brisk sales. Since they employed more workers at better wages, the market for
those industries producing consumer goods also expanded. Thus was the economic crisis following the stabilization of
the mark overcome in 1926. The years 1926 to 1928 were the years of the great rationalization boom… But the
rationalization boom necessarily came to a speedy end. As soon as the majority of enterprises were finished
renovating their plants technologically, the process of technological adaptation had to proceed more slowly. The
slowing down caused the demand for manufactured goods to fall, confronting the industries with stagnation.
The views of Otto Bauer (a Marxist) on the influence of American production methods on Germany, 1931

SOURCE 3
‘Before the war the most important characteristic of the lower-middle class was a fundamentally secure existence,
based on a combination of capital owned and income from work. How differently the living conditions of the new
middle class appear today! The need of the white-collar employees who have lost their jobs far exceed the capacities
of unemployment provisions. In April 1928 official publications counted a total of 183,371 white-collar workers
seeking employment; of those approximately 62,000 received insurance payments and approximately 31,5000
received emergency provision; therefore 90,000 unemployed white-collar workers were without unemployment
support and in the best cases, received small payments from social welfare for the poor. Those receiving emergency
support, that is, one third of all those supported, had already been unemployed for over six months, and therefore in
many cases drew only about one third of their salaries over half a year’
In 1929, the German writer and former social worker Hilde Walter, wrote about the ‘misery’ of the new Mittelstand in
the weekly news magazine Die Weltbuhne

26
4 POLITICS IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC, 1924-29: STABILITY OR HIDDEN CRISIS?
1. POLITICS – THE BASICS

27
 2. THE DEBATES
A key debate that runs throughout the history of the Weimar Republic is this:
- Did any significant group really support the Weimar Republic?
- In fact, did most significant groups really despise the Weimar Republic at worst, or just tolerate it at
best?
- Was the Weimar Republic a ‘Republic without Republicans’?
You need to know that this is a significant debate, and you need to recognise that sources might point in one direction
or another.

3. A PERIOD OF CALM IN GERMAN POLITICS?

Encouraging Signs

After 1923 politics became peaceful. There

were no attempted coups, from right or left,
between 1924 in 1929 and no major political
figures were assassinated. However political
violence did not completely disappear.
Although extremist parties did not gain much
support, they still made an impact.
Elections gave some encouraging signs to
supporters of the Republic. As the economic
situation stabilised in 1924, so Germans
switched back to voting for the main
democratic parties. These parties also made
substantial gains in the 1928 election, as you
can see in source 3.12, right.
This is really important: Think about some of the other evidence about economic crisis and class conflict in the Weimar
Republic in this booklet and booklet 1, and you could be surprised by the level of support for mainstream democratic
parties in 1928. This is a point you could make in an exam. Make sure you can specify exactly how much better parties
like the SPD did in 1928 when you’re preparing for any exams.
Continued Instability
However, behind this
broadly positive pattern, the
liberal DDP, which could
have formed the basis for
representing middle-class
interests within the
Parliamentary system, lost
ground. Peukert, in The
Weimar Republic, argues
that “the electoral decline of
the Liberals was the decisive event of Weimar politics because it undermined the pro-republican Centre from within.”
Furthermore, the Centre party moved to the right in the late 1920s, and some of its leaders like Brüning, began to
favour establishing a more authoritarian system because they increasingly blamed the descent into crisis and disorder
on the democratic system itself. They may have had a point.
The likelihood of an increased sense of stability was reduced by the fact that there were six Weimar governments
between 1924-1929, each one a short-lived coalition. One fell over the issue of the choice of national flag; another fell
over the creation of religious schools. Most did not have a secure majority in the Reichstag, and the refusal of the SPD
to take part in any government at national level between 1924-28 was a key reason for this. Political intransigence was a

28
key cause of weakness in the Weimar system at the
national level. Too many parties stuck to their political
principles rather than accept the compromises necessary
for effective government. Even when politicians tried to
work together, the need for constant bargaining
discredited parliamentary government in the eyes of many,
because it appeared that everything was up for grabs and
there were no real principles at stake. The necessity of
making deals and striking bargains is a key part of all
democratic politics, but many Germans on the right and
left chose to view this as a corrupt system of manoeuvring and self-seeking. In fact, the political stability of the years
between 1924 and 1929 only seems stable in contrast to the years between 1916 and 1924, and 1929-35. Compared to
Britain or the USA, Germany looked very different.
Why was it hard for parties to work together at a national level?
It should be noted that at state and city level the SPD worked effectively and democratically to form majority and
coalition governments, especially in Prussia, Germany’s largest state. Historians do not really have a convincing
explanation of why the system should have worked so badly at the national level, but so well at the local level. They
usually point to the crises in Germany in 1917 and 18, and the ways that they were resolved by Reichstag politicians
who had never had real responsibility before. In Imperial Germany parties were able to pursue their own narrow
interests in the knowledge that it was the Kaiser who ultimately decided policy. This was very much unlike local
politicians, who had exercised real responsibility in the Kaiserreich.
Another cause of public dissatisfaction with politicians was the voting system. Citizens cast their votes in 35 vast
electoral regions, and they voted for a party list rather than an individual politician. It was therefore the party machine
that decided who actually became a Reichstag deputy on the basis of the number of votes the party list won. Politicians
had to manoeuvre within their parties to end up near the top of the party list in the proportional representation system
dictated by the Weimar Constitution. This meant that individual politicians did not have a direct relationship with
specific groups of electors as occurs in a constituency system, and nor were they particularly tied to the interests or
needs of specific regions. The only route to election to the Reichstag was to ensure that you were near the top of the list
of your party’s proposed candidates for the nation as a whole.
The prospects for stable government were further reduced during this period by the growth of narrow sectional interest
parties which gave a total of 78 deputies at their peak in 1930. “Sectional” parties are parties which serve tiny little
interest groups, like a region, a town, or small economic grouping. Such sectional groups were encouraged by the
proportional representation system because only 60,000 votes were needed to get representation in the Reichstag, and
remember, because of the list system the 60,000 votes could come from absolutely anywhere in the country. Their
advocacy of narrow interests, such as compensation for the losers from hyperinflation in the Reich Party for People’s
Rights and Revaluation (but also in other parties, like the Business Party, German Farmers Party, Agricultural League,
Saxon Peasants, German-Hanoverian Party…) reduced the chances of the broader compromises required for effective
democratic government.
Were the parties themselves to blame?
The political parties themselves can also be blamed for some of the public disenchantment with the Weimar system.
The moderate parties were inconsistent in their attitudes to government. The only way for governments to gain
approval for policies in the Reichstag, given the presence of the radical opposition groups on the left and right, was by
building a majority in the middle ground. However, on any issue the moderate left (SPD) and centre-right (DVP) might
join forces with the radicals to defeat government policy. This dissolved trust between politicians themselves, and
between German people and the Weimar system. Right-centre coalitions of ZP, DVP and DNVP created a situation in
which the parties tended to agree on domestic issues but disagree on foreign affairs. Whilst coalitions that included the
SPD, DDP, ZP and DVP tended to agree on foreign policy but differ on domestic issues.
Look at the overview of the key political parties on the next page. What makes it difficult for them to work together?
Are changes within the parties promoting or discouraging cooperation?

29
• The SPD was the largest party until
1932. However, those on the left of
the spectrum feared that joining
coalitions with other parties would
lead to a weakening of their principle
s. On one occasion in November
1928, SPD government ministers
voted with their party against their
own government which was
proposing the funding of a new
battleship (the Battleship A affair).
• The Centre Party provided the
political leadership throughout the
period, participating in every single
coalition government from 1919 to
1932 and retaining a solid share of
the vote. However, the appeal of the
party was limited to traditional
Catholic areas and so it couldn’t
increase its share of the vote. The
party was divided amongst itself on
social and economic issues. When
the leadership passed to Kaas and
then Brüning in 1928 there was a
shift to the right.
• The Liberal Parties – the DDP and the
DVP – joined all the governments in
this period and Stresemann – one of
the few true ‘statesmen’ of the
Weimar Republic was a DVP member. However, their share of the vote nearly halved from 22% in 1920 to 14% by
1928. Moves to bring about some kind of united liberal party came to nothing, German liberalism failed to gain
popular support; and after 1929 its position declined
dramatically.
• The DNVP had opposed the republic since 1919 and Alfred Hugenburg had made a fortune in heavy industry before
on during the First World War, becoming an important
refused to take part in government but in 1925 and
shareholder in the Krupp munitions and steel concern. After the
1927 the DNVP joined government coalitions after
war, he joined the DNVP, and was a deputy in the Reichstag for
influential groups argued that the party needed to be them throughout the Weimar Republic. He used his fortune to
prepared to participate in government in order to snap up newspapers and film studios during the hyperinflation.
have any influence on government policy. However, At the same time, he took control of Germany’s largest chain of
this was unpopular with the extreme right wing of cinemas.
the party who exerted their influence when, in the The DNVP performed poorly in the 1928 general election, and
1928 election the DNVP vote fell by a quarter. Alfred he staged a coup within the DNVP, taking over its leadership
Hugenberg, an extreme nationalist, was elected as and using his huge newspaper empire to promote a political
the new leader. He rejected parliamentary ideology based on authoritarian, hard-right messages. He would
democracy and – a media tycoon – used his go on to play a hugely important role in the collapse of the
resources to promote his political message. The Weimar Republic, and was successful in the 1930 elections. He
DNVP reverted to a programme of opposition to the sponsored the referendum against the Young Plan in 1929.
republic and worked with the Nazis against the
Young Plan.
• By 1928 the NSDAP had become the largest of the Volkisch parties but still only polled 2.6% of the vote.

30
What do you notice about the direction that Weimar politics
appeared to be moving in?
What other patterns can you spot in the list of Weimar
governments? The table (right) should give you some ideas.

31
Why was it so difficult for Müller to form a cabinet with sufficient support in the Reichstag?
The election results of 1928 appear to be an endorsement of Weimar democracy. However, Müller’s ‘Great Coalition’
struggled for a number of reasons:
• In December 1928 Marx resigned the leadership of the Centre Party to Ludwig Kaas who triumphed over other
candidates close to the Catholic labour movement. This moved the Centre Party further from the SPD.
• The SPD and the DVP were ‘class enemies.’ Stresemann kept the DVP more central but he died suddenly in October
1929. Meanwhile trade unions and leftist opposition groups within the SPD wanted to pull it to the left.
• The extremes were becoming more troublesome. In 1928 the KPD changed its tactics in response to Stalin’s move
to the left and broke off all collaboration with the SPD (they had never joined a coalition at national level but they
sometimes voted with the SPD.) Henceforth they branded the SPD ‘Social Fascists.’ On the far right, Hugenberg
worked with the NSDAP to oppose the Young Plan.
• The economic situation was deteriorating. US investment dried up in 1928 and the Wall Street crash followed in
1929. It was exceptionally hard for coalition governments to deal with economic crisis as will be explored in the
next government. In the event Müller’s resigned when Hindenburg refused to use Article 48 to support his
government. This marked the end of parliamentary government – no subsequent government had a majority in the
Reichstag and Article 48 was increasingly used. Rule by decree became the norm rather than the exception.

4. SYMBOLS, VALUES AND WEIMAR DEMOCRACY

In addition, a series of apparently minor symbolic issues show the deep divisions within Germany. This is really
important for you to know: many of the underlying social, class, economic, religious, gender, and political differences in
the Weimar Republic were fought out through the use of symbols like Modernist architecture, jazz, or the national flag.
One example was the fierce controversy over the new national flag of black, red and gold, originally adopted by the
1848 revolutionaries which fought for democratic reform in the various states of central Europe before the unification
of Germany in 1871. This flag was fiercely opposed by conservatives who used the old imperial flag of black, white and
red. The Weimar regime might have won broader support if it had developed symbols that appealed to popular
emotions, but it had no heroes and very few commemorative days or parades. However, this does somewhat overlook
the significance of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold which was mentioned earlier. If you’re looking for the higher
marks, make sure that you highlight contradictions like these.
These issues, combined with a strong tradition of authoritarian rule and political irresponsibility in the Reichstag, meant
that throughout the Weimar Republic many people tried to argue that a more authoritarian system was necessary to
secure progress and justice. We should not dismiss such views, because such people were not always on the very far
extremes of German governments. There were parties like the KPD, the DAP, the NSDAP, and after 1928 the DNVP, that
really did argue for brutal authoritarianism. But it also seemed to very many other people that something was not right
in Germany, and rather than make the difficult compromises themselves to make it work, they blamed the Constitution,
politicians, and political system.

5. THE 1925 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Further evidence about the stability of the
Weimar regime comes from the first election to
the Presidency in 1925. The presidency was
crucial in the Weimar Republic’s development,
given its power to appoint into dismiss
chancellors and rule by decree under article 48.
Ebert was made president for three years by the
National constituent assembly in 1919. His
period in in office was renewed by the Reichstag
in 1922 to 3 years. Ebert was expected to win
the election due to be held in 1925 but, when he
died, the question of who such should succeed
him as President became a major issue.

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The Constitution declared that if no candidate in a presidential election gained over 50% in the first round of the voting,
a second round, in which new candidates could stand, had to be held. The candidate then winning most votes will
become president. In 1925 after indecisive first round when most parties put forward their own candidate, the parties
regrouped. The right, in an attempt to broaden its support, rallied behind a new candidate, Paul von Hindenburg – one
of the key Army generals in 1917-8. His attitude towards the republic is perhaps revealed in the fact that he had asked
the ex-Kaiser’s son (to many, the ‘crown prince’) for his permission to stand. The influential SPD Prussian leader Braun
withdrew from the presidential race in favour of a unity candidate, the drab Wilhelm Marx, leader of the Centre party,
in the hope of consolidating support for reforming Republic. The communists however refused to withdraw their
candidate to allow a united democratic front to oppose the right. Voting figures suggest this may have been vital in
determining the result of the 1925 presidential election.
Hindenburg did prove totally loyal to the constitution and so those who had hoped that his election might lead to the
restoration of the monarchy, or the creation of a military-type regime were disappointed. It has been argued by some
that the status of Hindenburg as president gave Weimar some respectability in conservative circles – he acted as a
substitute Kaiser and was well respected. On the other hand, he had no real sympathy for the republic or its values and
was an old man, set in his ways. He preferred to include the DNVP in government and, if possible, to exclude the SPD
and was influenced by anti-republican figures, many from the military. The historian Nicholls concluded ‘he refused to
betray the republic, but he did not rally the people to its banner.’
Arnold Brecht, a government legal officer (civil servant) in the Weimar years, wrote this in his 1966 autobiography about
Hindenburg’s victory in 1925:
The real surprise was not Hindenburg’s victory, which in view of the lack of pro-democratic majorities was quite logical,
in case the Communists abstained. The real surprise came later. It was the unexpected fact that Hindenburg subjected
himself quite loyally to the Weimar Constitution and maintained this attitude unhesitantly during his first term in office.
Both sides had expected his support for right-wing attempts to restore the monarchy, to abolish the colours of the
democratic republic in favour of the former black-white-red, to reduce the rights of the working classes, to reintroduce
more patriarchal conditions. The great surprise—disappointment on the one side, relief on the other—was that he did
not do any of this. During the election campaign he said that now he had read the Constitution for the first time and had
found it quite good. “If duty requires that I act as President on the basis of the Constitution, without regard to party,
person, or origin, I shall not fail.” Campaign promises are often mere sedatives; no one trusts them. But the Field
Marshall kept his for seven years. He swore an oath to the Constitution before the Reichstag. He had the black-red-gold
standard fly above his palace and on his car and made no attempt to show the black-white-red colours instead. He
made no step toward a monarchistic restoration. He performed his presidential functions conscientiously in the manner
prescribed by the Constitution. During the first five years, he did not even once make use of the President’s emergency
power under article 48, as Ebert, much to Hindenburg’s annoyance, had done repeatedly, and then did so only at
Chancellor Brüning’s request. For seven years he dismissed and appointed chancellors in strict accordance with the
Constitution without regard to his personal preferences; the Social Democrat Hermann Müller was chancellor under him
for two years (1928–1930). He signed all acts passed by the Reichstag, whether or not he liked them, even the first
extension of the Act for the Protection of the Republic in 1927, though with a little grumble about the paragraph on the
further exile of former royal families, the “Kaiser-Paragraph.”
1. Read the excerpt. Who was it by? When was it written? Who was it aimed at? What was it intended to do, do
you think? How do you think these factors influence the usefulness of the source?
2. What are the major claims made by Brecht? How plausible do you find them, given what else you know about
the mid-1920s? (Politics, economics, social class, events, crises, developments etc.)?
Think carefully. What do you know about civil servants/government officials in the Weimar Republic?

6. MILITARY, ARISTOCRATIC AND BUSINESS ELITES AND THE PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM

We have seen already how many people in the army officer corps supported the Republic only because of their fear of
the worse alternative. The same could be said of the compromises reached with senior business leaders between 1918
1924. They agreed to those compromises largely because they felt that government led by the SPD was preferable to a
communist revolution, and the destruction of their wealth and position in society (which is what had happened in
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Russia). However, for the Weimar Republic to consolidate its authority in a more positive way, a more positive
commitment from business, aristocracy, and the army would be important, but this did not develop even during the
calm days of the mid-1920s.
Many industrialists resented what they saw as the growing burdens of the welfare state and, as in the 1928 Great Ruhr
Lockout, tried to reassert greater control of wages. The landed aristocracy (which also furnished most of the army's
officer corps) resented its loss of influence, both personal in terms of the deference and lifestyle they enjoyed on their
large rural estates, but also financial because of the collapsing world food prices. The Army was dominated by generals
who wanted to keep the army as “a state within state”, supposedly above politics, but there also were many in the
officer corps who simply desired are more authoritarian system. Many of the employees of the state, such as judges and
civil servants, retained a distaste for democracy, which can be seen in their responses to the White Terror and Kapp
Putsch. Few among opinion formers, such as church leaders, teachers and newspaper editors, tried proactively to win
support for democracy, even if they tolerated it or even supported it themselves.
Thus, the people in key German institutions failed the Weimar Republic during the golden years. One historian,
Bookbinder, has summarised the situation as follows: “the schools not being geared to create critically thinking citizens
and with newspapers not doing what they might to clarify issues, citizenship development did not progress very quickly.
This was especially unfortunate during the peaceful period of the Republic. It was under these conditions, when people
were not continually beset by crisis and when the shrill voices of the extremists created less resonance, that real
progress towards the creation of Republicans could have been made… Little inspiration from the political leaders and a
little encouragement to democracy from the pulpit or the teacher’s desk, the political education of many Germans
made little progress.”

7. TAKE IT FURTHER: IDEAS OF A NEW GERMANY IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC: EVALUATION OF ARTHUR MOELLER VAN DEN
BRUCK, DAS DRITTE REICH (THE THIRD REICH) (1923)
People like Hindenburg and Hugenburg drew on a rich strand of German thought and culture; they were not bizarre
extremists, but represented a core set of ideas shared by many Germans on the right wing of politics.
Moeller van den Bruck was not a ‘national socialist’, nor did he directly inspire National Socialism. This book was
published around the time of the Beer Hall Putsch, so definitely was not an early inspiration to Hitler. However, as more
and more people read the work, radical right-wing groups like the NSDAP started to absorb his ideas. But Moeller van
den Bruck would be excellent evidence to use in an exam answer to show a fairly typical upper-middle-class response to
the Weimar Republic’s key political features!

The attempt this book makes was not possible from any party standpoint; it Summary of each paragraph’s
ranges over all our political problems, from the extreme Left to the extreme main meaning/point in your own
Right. It is written from the standpoint of a third party, which is already in being. words:
Only such an attempt could address itself to the nation while attacking all the
parties; could reveal the disorder and discord into which the parties have long
since fatefully fallen and which has spread from them through our whole political
life; could reach that lofty spiritual plane of political philosophy that the parties
have forsaken, but which must for the nation’s sake be maintained, which the
conservative must preserve and which the revolutionary must take by storm.
Instead of government by party we offer the ideal of the third empire. It is an old
German conception and a great one. It arose when our first empire fell; it was
early quickened by the thought of a millennium; but its underlying thought has
always been a future that should be not the end of all things but the dawn of a
German age in which the German people would for the first time fulfil their
destiny on earth.
In the years that followed the collapse of our second empire [the Kaiserreich] we
have had experience of Germans; we have seen that the nation’s worst enemy is
herself: her trustfulness, her casualness, her credulity, her inborn, fate-fraught,
apparently unshakable optimism. The German people were scarcely defeated—

34
as never a people was defeated before in history—when the mood asserted
itself: “We shall arise again all right!” We heard German fools saying: “We have
no fears for Germany!” We saw German dreamers nod their heads in assent:
“Nothing can happen to me!”
We must be careful to remember that the thought of the third empire is a
philosophical idea; that the conceptions which the words third empire arouse—
and the book that bears the title—are misty, indeterminate, charged with
feeling; not of this world but of the next. … Let us be perfectly explicit: the
thought of the third empire—to which we must cling as our last and highest
philosophy—can only bear fruit if it is translated into concrete reality. It must
quit the world of dreams and step into the political world. It must be as realist as
the problems of our constitutional and national life; it must be as sceptical and
pessimistic as befits the times.
There are Germans who assure us that the empire that rose out of the ruins on
the ninth of November is already the third empire: democratic, republican,
logically complete. These are our opportunists and eudaemonists. There are
other Germans who confess their disappointment but trust to the
“reasonableness” of history. These are our rationalists and pacifists. They all
draw their conclusions from the premises of their party–political or utopian
wishes, but not from the premises of the reality that surrounds us. They will not
realize that we are a fettered and maltreated nation, perhaps on the very verge
of dissolution.
Our reality connotes the triumph of all the nations of the earth over the German
nation; the primacy in our country of parliamentarism after the Western model—
and party rule. If the third empire is ever to come it will not beneficently fall from
heaven. If the third empire is to put an end to strife it will not be born in a piece
of philosophic dreaming. The third empire will be an empire of organization in
the midst of European chaos.
The occupation of the Ruhr and its consequences worked a change in the minds
of people. It was the first thing that made the nation think. It opened up the
possibility of liberation for a betrayed people. It seemed about to put an end to
the “policy of fulfilment” that had been merely party politics disguised as foreign
policy. It threw us back on our own power of decision. It restored our will.
Parliamentarism has become an institution of our public life, whose chief
function would appear to be—in the name of the people—to enfeeble all
political demands and all national passions.
Today we call this resolution not conservative but nationalist.

What are Moeller van den Bruck’s attitudes towards:

a) Political parties
b) Parliament
c) Destiny
d) Typical Germans and their attitudes (there are quite a few of these!)
e) What the ‘programme’ or ‘philosophy’ of the Third Reich should be.
1. Think now about the value of the provenance, and how useful it makes the evidence.
a. Who wrote it? Is it typical of a wider movement or set of ideas, or unique and interesting in his own right?
b. When was it written? Why might this change our views of the usefulness of the evidence? It might make it
more useful for explaining a, b and c; but less useful for explaining x, y and z.
c. Who was it written for?

35
 d. What is the tone of the work? How does this help us understand the value of it? Does it look like a practical
set of demands? How might the answer to this question shape our assessment of its usefulness.

8. TAKE IT FURTHER
For an overview of party realignment in this period see this podcast:
https://www.history.org.uk/student/categories/915/module/8684/a-level-topic-guide-germany-1871-1991/8993/how-
stable-was-the-weimar-republic1924-29
He explores this theme in more detail in this series: https://www.massolit.io/courses/the-weimar-republic-1918-
33/introduction-88215d35-6ad0-4be0-9376-85da7e248b93 (Lectures 2, 3 and 4 apply to this period.)

9. PRIMARY SOURCE ANALYSIS GERMANY, 1924-9

With references to sources A, B and C, and your understanding of the historical context, assess the value of these three
sources to a historian studying the state of the Weimar Republic in the period 1924-29.
Source A:
William Shirer, an American journalist, describes his impressions of Weimar Germany. He arrived in Germany in 1925. In
1960, he wrote a best-selling book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and this is an extract:
A wonderful ferment was working in Germany. Life seemed more free, more modern, more exciting than in any place I
had ever seen. Nowhere else did the arts or the intellectual life seem so lively. In contemporary writing, painting,
architecture, in music and drama, there were new currents and fine talents. And everywhere there was an accent on
youth. One sat up with the young people all night in the sidewalk cafes, the plush bars, the summer camps… or in a
smoke-filled artist’s studio and talked endlessly about life. They were a healthy, carefree, sun worshiping lot and they
were filled with an enormous zest for life. The old oppressive Prussian spirit seemed to be dead and buried. Most
Germans one met – politicians, writers, editors, artists, professors, students, businessmen, labour leaders – struck you
as being democratic, liberal, even pacifist.
Provenance clue: The when of this source will be important to establishing its value/usefulness. So will the ‘who’ –
would a newly arrived American journalist know all these people? One last clue: ‘rose-tinted spectacles’?
Source B:
S. Parker Gilbert was a leading US banker, and the Agent for Reparations Payments, reporting to the Reparations
Commission on the state of the German economy in June, 1927.
The readjustment of German industry and trade to conditions of stabilization appears to have reached a fairly advanced
stage. It is still only three and a half years since currency stability was tentatively effected and less than three years
since it became fully safeguarded. Within that time German business enterprises have undertaken and largely
completed a process of sweeping reorganization, the main outlines of which were described at length in the last Report.
By the autumn of 1926, some of the most acute problems of readjustment were already yielding before increased
production on the part of industry and growing purchasing power on the part of the people; in other respects,
particularly in the stubborn problem of unemployment, the position was less encouraging and there were major
difficulties still awaiting solution. Further progress toward recovery has been made in the intervening months.
Unemployment has diminished somewhat more than can be explained on a purely seasonal basis, and the production
and consumption of goods are proceeding generally at a higher rate than at any time since stabilization.
Provenance clue: The intended audience will be important here to establishing the value of the source; so will the style
of writing (what could you contrast it with?); so will the tone.
Source C:
Gustav Stresemann, in a speech to the central committee of the DVP, in February 1928, after the Zentrum threatened
his ability to continue in office unless he supported a law to promote Catholic schools, and his own party side-lined him
in coalition negotiations.

36
Let us not fool ourselves about this: we are in the midst of a parliamentary crisis… This crisis has two roots: one the joke
that has emerged as the parliamentary system in Germany, secondly the completely false position of parliament in
relation to its responsibility to the nation. What does a ‘parliamentary system’ mean? It means the responsibility of the
Reich minister to parliament, which can pass a vote of no confidence and force him to resign. In no way does it entail
the allocation of ministerial offices according to the strength of the parliamentary parties. The minister is designated by
the Reich President. … I personally resist the adoption of the idea that a parliamentary party ‘withdraws’ its minister. …
The Reichstag can withdraw its confidence from them… but ‘withdrawing’ a minister means in reality that the individual
ceases to exist and becomes a mere agent of one or another organisation. This conception means the end of liberalism
in general.

5 SOCIETY AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE MID-WEIMAR REPUBLIC

1. THE BASICS

Young People
There was a perception that young people were
becoming more rebellions. Concern about anti social
behaviour and the activity of youth ‘cliques’ in large
industrial cities. For young people themselves, a
major concern was the rise in youth unemployment.
Educational reforms did not fully break down social
and religious divides in education. In theory the new
system (right) was much fairer. In practice, the higher
classes still dominated the Gymnasiums. The
influence of the churches still remained strong.
Youth groups remained strong having been a feature
of German life since the 1890s. This included church
youth groups, political groups and also more
independent young groups such as the Wandervogal.

37
Women
There was much talk in Weimar Germany about the ‘new woman’ – free, independent, sexually liberated and having
greater opportunities in employment and public life. However, there was fierce resistance to change from conservative
forces in society and for many women there was much continuity.

Jewish People
• There were more than half a million Jews living in Germany in the 1920s. 80% lived in large cities
• Most Jewish people were fully assimilated members of German society.
• Many Jews were successful (16% of lawyers and 11% of doctors.)
• Anti-Semitism was strong among nationalist groups throughout the 1920s but most widespread at times of national
crisis. Jewish bankers and businessmen often accused of corruption.

2. THE DEBATES
The key debate here is generally the extent of change v continuity.
Typical exam questions on social change in Germany might go something along the lines of:
- ‘Most Germans experienced profound liberation in the years 1924-29.’ Assess the validity of this view.
- ‘Society and social life changed little in the years 1924-29.’ Assess the validity of this view.
- ‘Weimar society between 1924-9 was marked by social transformation and liberty.’ Was it?
- ‘The status of women and/or young people was transformed in the Weimar Republic between 1924-1929.’ Do
you agree?
- Was there a ‘new woman’ in Weimar Germany?

3. SOCIAL GROUPS
The study of social groups is especially important because the Weimar Republic’s constitution promised many things to
many different social groups, and its electoral system (proportional representation) meant that often, different social
groups had the ability to create small parties and win seats in the Reichstag.
The Composition of German Society
- The economic elite of industrialists, entrepreneurs, financiers and great landowners comprised about 5% of the
population.
- The middle classes ranged from the upper middle classes (doctors, lawyers, university professors, senior civil
servants, army and navy officers) to the Mittelstand of small business people, shop owners, and lower raking
civil servants, comprised about 30% of the population.
- The working classes made up about 50% of the population but their composition too varied widely between
skilled and unskilled workers; urban and rural workers; domestic servants and company employees; Catholics
and Protestants; a more prosperous North and West, and a poorer East and South.
This is very important, because it means we need to emphasises divisions within social groups, and not treat them as
blocks. In an essay, you’d need to say that – it would show you understood some of the pitfalls of talking in
generalisations. But you’d also need evidence for different groups! For example, working-class people in the countryside
relying on agriculture, and working-class people in the cities working in skilled industries. There was a growing sense of

38
class division across the 1920s (something which, to a degree, was covered up in the Kaiserreich by appeals to
nationalism, and loyalty to the Kaiser and local ruling houses).

4. EDUCATION AND YOUNG PEOPLE

Evaluating Continuity and Change in the lives of young people
- What impresses you more: the continuities or changes in young people’s lives brought about in the Weimar
Republic?
- Read the information below and draw up two lists of key continuities, and key changes. Then write a couple of
paragraphs developing your arguments to the continuity/change question.
- Was the Weimar Republic a place where young people were becoming more rebellious?

The German education system, with its emphasis on

obedience and authority, was a target of left-wing
critics of the old order – and a home for right-wing
critics of the new order!
Left wing critics wanted to break down the division of
schools into Protestant and Catholic; break the
monopoly of the middle classes over the Gymnasien
(secondary grammar schools) and universities (most
working-class children left school around 13 or 14); and
create democratic consciousness amongst teachers.
By and large, they failed. Most schools remained either
Protestant or Catholic. By 1930, only 10% of
Gymnasium (secondary grammar schools) were from
the working classes. And most teachers and university
professors remained resolutely conservative.

39
40
41
 5. THE CHANGING POSITION OF WOMEN
Evaluating Continuity and Change in Women’s Lives
- What impresses you more: the continuities or changes in women’s lives brought about in the Weimar Republic?
- First, draw up two lists of key continuities, and key changes. Then write a couple of paragraphs developing your
arguments to the continuity/change question.

42
43
Evidence: Diary of a Working-Class Woman, 1928
This extract comes from an anonymous description of a typical day in her life in 1928.
A summer morning! The sun is shining in my face. I wake up, jump out of bed and to the window. The smell of flowers
wafts up from the garden below and the golden-yellow fields of grain undulate in the distance. The birds are singing
their morning songs. It’s so solemn, so still. I stand there, as if in a dream. Suddenly I hear a voice: “Don’t you want to go
to work today?” What? Work in the gloomy factory halls on a day such as this? It’s much too beautiful for that. But it’s
not for you to enjoy, proletarian girl, go to the foul-smelling factory halls and toil, so that the factory owners can spend
their summers somewhere on the seashore. I eat my breakfast and set out for work. On the way I meet all my fellow
sufferers. They’re in a hurry and it seems to me that they are fleeing the splendour of the summer day. No sooner have I
arrived in the factory than the siren howls, piercing body and soul. Now I will stand at the loom, with all its mind-
numbing clatter, for nine long hours. If only it were noon already! For variation I sometimes go out to the privy and like
a prisoner watch the dancing rays of sunlight through the grid. But, oh, dear, when I return, it turns out I was outside
three minutes too long and I am once again scolded by our foreman, who stands at the door the whole day long and is
probably training to be the privy director. Finally, it’s noon and we rush home, eat and quickly return to work. Once
again the siren howls and once again I stand at the loom, where I will remain this long afternoon. It’s very hot. My
thoughts are already confused and drift off. If only the weather were this nice on a Sunday! One Sunday is far too little
free time and nine hours far too much time spent in the factory each day. Yes, eight hours of work, eight hours of rest,
eight hours of sleep, the sweet triad of life. If only we had an eight-hour day. But even eight hours would be too long for
most women, who must also attend to the household. Thus pass the days, the years, the sweetest hours of our lives,
and we lose track of what has become of them. Once again I look at the clock. It's four p.m. Well, one more hour and
this torture will be over. Finally, it’s time to stop work. I rush out, but I feel no joy. I am too exhausted.
You can use sources like this to provide evidence for your essays. Some phrases you could use:
o Evidence from working-class women’s accounts, however, clearly shows…
o As we can see in anonymous accounts and diaries from the 1920s, working-class women aspired to…
o Evidence from diaries and anonymous accounts of working women’s lives in this period paint a very
different picture. They show…

6. THE POSITION OF JEWS: ACCEPTANCE AND NEW ANTI-SEMITISM

- What impresses you more: the continuities or changes in Jewish people’s lives brought about in the Weimar
Republic?
- First, draw up two lists of key continuities, and key
changes. Then write a couple of paragraphs
developing your arguments to the
continuity/change question.

44
45
 7. TAKE IT FURTHER
The final chapter of Lee’s Weimar Germany (in the library folder) gives a good overview. Weitz: ‘Weimar Germany:
Promise and Tragedy’ has good coverage of Weimar Society. There are also specific books on groups such as women
(e.g. Boak) and Jews (e.g. Niewyk ) available in the college library for those with specific interests on particular aspects.

8. PRIMARY SOURCE ANALYSIS

With references to sources A, B and C, and your understanding of the historical context, assess the value of these three
sources to a historian studying the position of women in Weimar Germany
Source A
My son, I noted with some discomfort that you kept your seat on the streetcar, instead of offering it to one of the
women who otherwise must stand. Does it count as modern to be a boor? Father, you have slept through some new
developments. The women of your time acknowledged their weaknesses as a claim to all manner of protection and
consideration, as the weak are owed by the strong. This obligation grew out of the circumstance that they didn’t share
the rights that men had… That has changed. It was the women themselves, due to an easily understood hunger for air
and life, who shattered the bell jar in which they were vegetating. They have become comrades in work and play, in
pleasure and struggle, and among comrades everything is equal.
From an article by Alfred Polgar, 1928: A Conversation between Men.

46
Source B
This new figure never became average, never became the mass female. There was no time for that. Until today this new
figure has remained a pioneer, the standard bearer…that had yet to develop. But before she could evolve into a type
and expand into an average, she once again ran up against barriers. Her old womanly fate—motherhood, love, family—
trailed after her into the spheres of the new womanliness, which immediately presented itself as a new objectivity. And
she therefore found herself not liberated, as she had naively assumed, but now doubly bound: conflicts between work
and marriage now appeared, between uninhibited drives and inhibited mores, conflicts between the public and private
aspects of her life, which could not be synthesized… It easily appeared as if the new freedom for women had achieved
nothing.
From Back to the Good Old Days by Alice Ruhle Gerstel, an article published in January 1933.
Source C
Women have become unpopular. That is not good news because it touches on things that cannot be explained by
reason alone. An uncomfortable atmosphere is gathering around all working women, perhaps unorganized but very
powerful countermovement is taking place at all of them… Along the entire spectrum from left to right the meaning of
women’s employment and their right to it are suddenly being questioned, more or less directly. At the moment it is not
even the old discussion over socalled ‘equal rights’, over ‘equal pay for equal work’ that occupies the foreground,
Suddenly we are obliged to counter the most primitive arguments against the gainful employment of women
From Twilight for Women?, an article published on 7 July 1931.

6 ART AND CULTURE IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC: A NEW BATTLEGROUND FOR

POLITICS
1. THE BASICS
The Weimar years were characterised by an atmosphere of cultural and personal freedom and experimentation in arts
and culture. Art has always been used as a way of debating politics, culture and society – think about how hip hop and
rap music, for example, express the politics of race and poverty, or how movies and TV shows explore ideas about
sexuality and gender roles. But this was particularly true in the Weimar Republic, because the years around the First
World War were a global turning point in all culture. Part of the reason for the explosion in creativity in this period was
not really to do specifically with the Weimar Republic at all. Many new media technologies took off in the 1920s, and
typically originated in the USA.
- Films and cinema took off in the 1920s, first silent, then ‘talkies.
- Records were invented, which meant that American jazz could be heard everywhere for the first time, and
Europeans had their first taste of black music.
- Loudspeakers meant that nightclubs could open, and people could dance and express themselves in new ways.
- Radio meant that new music started to appear in people’s homes.
- Concrete meant that architects could build in new shapes, and new scales – the skyscraper was born.
But there was also a powerful sense among artists that the art of the Victorian and Edwardian world was corrupt and
evil, and had to be destroyed. This art represented to them the culture that caused the First World War; it was a lie, a
fraud, a sham, and it led to death and exploitation. This idea came to a head in a movement called Modernism: a family
of artistic styles that emerged around World War One in music, art, architecture, sculpture, poetry and literature and
rejected the art of the past.

47
However, away from the cities, traditional values and tastes still held sway and radical, experimental, modernist ideas
were viewed with suspicion and hostility. In the eyes of nationalistic Germans who wished to preserve authority,
traditional family values, conservative behaviour by women, respect for the teachings of the churches, and a Germanic
culture, the cultural experimentation of the Weimar years was leading to moral degeneracy and the influx of
unwelcome foreign influence.

2. THE DEBATES
There are several areas of debate that you could be asked about on this topic:
- Weimar culture was innovative, yes, but was it generally confined to a small, middle-class, urban clique?
- Were the really impactful innovations the ones from America, like film, jazz and radio? Not Germany…
- Were the conspicuous features of Weimar art, literature and architecture already around before the war?
- Did cultural change cause genuine social change?
- Did Weimar culture cause genuine political conflict, or was it really mostly marginal artistic figures and
intellectuals having a debate amongst themselves?
Typical questions you could get include:
- ‘Weimar culture tells us little about politics and society in this period.’ Do you agree?
- To what extent did the arts in Weimar Germany reflect the social and political tensions in the country?
- ‘The arts in Weimar Germany fundamentally undermined support for the Republic.’ Do you agree?
- ‘Weimar culture was generally unpopular; it was American culture which ordinary Germans most appreciated.’
Assess the validity of this view.
- ‘The most important feature of the arts in Germany between 1924-29 is the freedom and change they offered
for ordinary Germans.’ Assess the validity of this view.

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 3. A CHANGING URBAN LANDSCAPE
In the 1920s, local governments tried to improve the urban
environment by constructing parks, libraries, better transport, huge
housing schemes, hospitals and nursery schools.
However, much of this was financed through debt. Furthermore,
often the housing schemes were highly modernist in nature, and
they served to provoke people by being a constant visual reminder
throughout Germany’s cities of the break with the past and the
revolutionary commitment to the workers.
In fact, workers themselves often hated these modernist housing
developments because they weren’t traditional, did not blend in,
were a ‘visual shock’ and, because they were so experimental, were Figure 1 An experimental Modernist block of flats in
very expensive to live in and often leaked because they Stuttgart by Mies van der Rohe, built for an exhibition of
experimental architecture in 1927. It shaped architecture
experimented with new materials (concrete walls, metal window
for the next 100 years – but was deeply controversial at
frames) and flat roofs (which often leaked). the time.
To many contemporaries, and not just those on the right, the new
architecture seemed to reject practicality, tradition, comfort and convention. It seemed to be ‘making a point’ – and a
political point at that. And indeed it was!
The architects pursuing this new style of architecture (Modernism), especially in the new housing estates, were
generally socialists, or even communists. They wanted to create symbols that everyone would have to confront that the
old world was dead, destroyed and over, gone for ever. This was bound to be provocative!
Task: Bruno Taut and the Utopian Housing Estate
Take a look at the words and images at https://theculturetrip.com/europe/germany/articles/profiling-bruno-taut-
germany-s-utopian-modernist-architect/.
Then have a go at answering the following questions, in full sentences. It’ll mean writing at least two paragraphs.
- What buildings and estates did Taut design?
- What were his goals and objectives?
- What stands out to you about his designs? Describe the features that strike you most.
- One of his estates is called Uncle Tom’s Cabin (or Onkel Toms Hütte, in German). What is the symbolism of that
name? (Google can help you…)

4. THE JAZZ AGE

For many, particularly the young, the arrival of Jazz music, through the new technology of gramophone records, was a
transformative experience, breathing new life into a dead culture.
Evidence: The Excitement of New Music

49
 In this article below in a magazine, The Literary World, Ivan
Goll celebrated the change that jazz brought. We need to be
cautious in how we read this and quote from it: it might seem
racist to us, but in fact, Goll was trying to celebrate new
music and dancing, but using the language of his time. Up to
this point, Europeans danced something like this image on
the left – it was formal, synchronised, and in routines. It was
still fun – think Strictly Come Dancing!
But with the arrival of jazz, new, freer styles of dancing
became more popular, like the rag, the cakewalk, the
Charleston or the bear. The most famous exponent of this
newer style of dancing was Josephine Baker, who appeared in
music halls, theatre and cabarets in Paris, and then across
Europe. Here you can see her dancing for some peasants
somewhere in Europe in 1928:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-htW75ATJg. She was
probably the biggest star of her age.
Goll was an avant-garde artist, who tried to promote peace between France and Germany, and was a member of
important movements like Surrealism and Expressionism in theatre, art, music and poetry. In this essay in Uhu in 1926,
he argues that new forms of culture are breathing new life into a dead, corrupt Europe:
The Negroes Are Conquering Europe
The Negroes are conquering Paris. They are conquering Berlin. They have already filled the whole continent with their
howls, with their laughter. And we are not shocked, we are not amazed: on the contrary, the old world calls on its failing
strength to applaud them. …
Negroes dance with their senses. (While Europeans can only dance with their minds.) They dance with their legs,
breasts, and bellies. This was the dance of the Egyptians, the whole of antiquity, the Orient. This is the dance of the
Negroes. One can only envy them, for this is life, sun, primeval forests, the singing of birds and the roar of a leopard,
earth. They never dance naked: and yet, how naked is the dance! They have put on clothes only to show that clothes do
not exist for them.
The musicians play with, they do not merely play along! They are located left of the stage, then soon enough they are
following after a dancer or throwing out their remarks in a song. They are genuine actors. They also help to emphasize
the parody. They laugh continuously. Whom are they making fun of? No—they aren’t making fun of anyone: they are
just enjoying, the playing, the dancing, the beat. They enjoy themselves with their faces, with their legs, with their
shoulders; everything shakes and plays its part. It often seems as if they had the leading roles.

5. PAINTING AND ART

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6.1.1 The impact of war
Left: One of several confronting images from Otto
Dix’s works titled War
The lingering effects of World War I had an obvious
impact on Weimar era art. Nowhere was this more
noticeable than in the work of Otto Dix.
A former soldier who served almost the entire
duration of the war, Dix was haunted by his
wartime experiences to the point of mental
breakdown. He moved to Dresden, one of
Germany’s leading artistic cities, where he was
influenced by the Expressionists, the Dada
movement and other modernist schools.
In the early 1920s, Dix began work on a series of
paintings depicting the war. He utilised dark tones
and grotesque detail, showing injured soldiers, decomposing bodies and skeletons to depict the horrors of mechanised
warfare. Probably the best known of these pieces is The Trench (1923, see image above). Dix also represented the home
front of Weimar, painting depictions of crippled war veterans and despairing civilians on the streets of Berlin. The
confronting themes and monstrous detail in Dix’s work created such a stir that many galleries blacklisted him.
On coming to power, the Nazis deemed Otto Dix a “degenerate artist” and ordered him to paint landscapes. Many of his
older pieces were either removed from public display or burned.
6.1.2 Dadaism
Left: This Dadaist piece by Raoul Hausmann contains typical anti-war anti-
bourgeois themes.
Though not native to Germany, the Dada art movement also became
popular there in the early 1920s. Dadaism emerged in Switzerland during
the war. It could be found in painting, graphic design, photography,
literature and poetry.
Dada artists were an anarchistic bunch, unlike any established artistic
movement. They despised war, rejected tradition and discarded capitalist
middle-class values. Instead, they sought to create an ‘anything goes’
artistic movement that celebrated chaos and disorder.
Some Dada artists spoke about their wish to offend art lovers and destroy
perceptions about what art actually is. Dadaist creations had no logical
form or rules: they were intended to shock or confuse. Dada artists made
extensive use of collage and montage, though these compositions rarely
made much if any sense. George Grosz and Hannah Hoch were at the
forefront of a small but prolific Dada clique based in Berlin.
Most German artists, however, were too politically motivated to be
swept up by Dadaism. They preferred not to divorce themselves from the political and social events of the Weimar
period. Even Hannah Hoch’s collage Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch
in Germany, though disjointed and random, still contained political overtones.

51
6.1.3 Neue Sachlichkeit – ‘New Objectivity’ or ‘New Matter-of-Factness’
Left: Self Portrait by Christian Schad, 1927. This shows a stripped down,
slightly ugly or brutal realism, as well as stripping the ‘New Woman’
(see her hair cut) and making her a sex object.
Neue Sachlichkeit got its name from the exhibition Neue Sachlichkeit
held in Mannheim in 1923. The exhibition was part of the phenomenon
of the ‘return to order’ following the First World War (when artists
rejected the more extreme avant-garde forms of art for more
reassuring and traditional approaches); and was described by the
organiser G.F. Hartlaub, as ‘new realism bearing a socialist flavour’.
Two key artists associated with Neue Sachlichkeit are Otto Dix and
George Grosz, two of the greatest realist painters of the twentieth
century. In their
paintings and drawings
they vividly depicted
and excoriated the
corruption, frantic
pleasure seeking and
general demoralisation
of Germany following
its defeat in the war, and the ineffectual Weimar Republic which
governed until the arrival in power of the Nazi Party in 1933. But their
work also constitutes a more universal, savage satire on the human
condition. Other artists include Christian Schad and Georg Schrimpf.
The New Objectivity artists did not belong to a formal group. Various
Weimar Republic artists were oriented towards the concepts associated
with it, however. Broadly speaking, artists linked with New Objectivity
include Käthe Kollwitz, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, George Grosz, John Figure 2 Käthe Kollwitz - Mother with Child. This was
Heartfield, Conrad Felixmüller, Christian Schad, and Rudolf Schlichter, part of Kollwitz’s commitment to tell the raw emotion
who all "worked in different styles, but shared many themes: the of the horrors of war but from a woman’s perspective.
horrors of war, social hypocrisy and moral decadence, the plight of the
poor and the rise of Nazism".

6. LITERATURE AND BOOKS

Writers such as Alfred Döblin, Erich Maria Remarque and the brothers Heinrich and Thomas Mann presented a bleak
look at the world and the failure of politics and society through literature. Foreign writers also travelled to Berlin, lured
by the city's dynamic, freer culture. The decadent cabaret scene of Berlin was documented by Britain's Christopher
Isherwood, such as in his novel Goodbye to Berlin which was later transposed to the play I Am a Camera, which was
adapted into the musical and musical movie Cabaret.
Weimar Germany also saw the publication of some of the world's first openly gay literature, from authors such as Klaus
Mann, Anna Elisabet Weirauch, Christa Winsloe, Erich Ebermayer, and Max René Hesse.
But there was a darker side to this literature too, and this tended to be the books that sold best. Authors like:
- Ernst Jünger in Storm of Steel (1920) was Jünger’s diary, and told of the deep, spiritual bond between men that
was forged in the trenches of the Western Front, and how lost and spiritually desolate these men felt when they
returned to a land that could never really understand or accommodate them. He rewrote it in 1924 into
something more like a novel, when it became a hit. Patriots and nationalists loved this book, and Jünger ‘hated
democracy’. But he was not a fascist: he was writing about a world that was rejecting him, and his brothers from
the war. It was one of the first accounts of the front to be published anywhere, and sold heavily amongst young
men – especially the ones that joined the Freikorps and the NSDAP.

52
 - Hermann Hesse in Steppenwolf (1927) is about a man
having a breakdown, reading a book about a man having
a breakdown, who seems to resemble him. He wanders,
lost, through city streets, seeking meaning in a world
where, he realises, there is none. He loses himself in a
world of sex, drugs, dance… and then love. It was an
immediate hit, but loathed by conservatives and
nationalists. He won Nobel Prize for literature in 1946.
- Erich Maria Remarque in All Quiet on the Western
Front, published in episodes in 1928 in a magazine, and
as a book in 1929, and was a full-frontal attack on the
‘stab in the back’ myth. A soldier from the front fights in
battles he can no longer even name, and goes home on
a visit to a world that he cannot recognise. He spends a
night by his mother’s bedside, talking to her as she dies.
He longs to return to the front, and revels in killing a
man with his bare hands. His best friend has his leg
blown off, and the soldier does everything in his power
to stay with him. The war is ending, and his beloved
brothers are dying one by one of disease, hunger,
machine-gun fire and shelling. He realises the war is
about to end, and expresses hope for a different future –
a different Germany. He is killed on almost the last day
of the war, when finally the headline in the papers read
‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. It was an immediate
global bestseller, and in 1930 there was a Hollywood
Oscar-winning blockbuster – an early talkie, and you can
see the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grapXipP3fM . The book and film outraged nationalists,
yet portrayed a true German hero giving his life for his country, and protecting his brothers in arms. This book
was one of the first to be burnt in 1933. The 1930 movie has one of the greatest battle scenes in cinema history:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHuNQER_8rI – not easy watching.

7. CINEMA
Weimar Germany’s political and social instability, as well as its economic shortages, had a profound impact on post-war
German culture. A new cultural movement emerged, later described as German Expressionism. This Expressionism was
most obvious on film. German cinema recovered quickly in the 1920s as ordinary people sought cheap entertainment
and escapism from the decade’s political and economic woes.
Unable to afford the huge sets, lavish costumes and extensive props of Hollywood, German film-makers looked for new
ways to convey atmosphere, mood and emotion. They also explored much darker themes than Hollywood: crime,
immorality, social decay and the destructive powers of money and technology. As a consequence, German
expressionism gave birth to two new cinematic genres: the Gothic horror movie and film noir (crime thrillers which
explore the darker aspects of human behaviour). Some of the best-
known German expressionist films were:
The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920)
One of the earliest horror films in history, The Cabinet of Doctor
Caligari tells of a performing mystic and his stage sidekick, a
sleepwalking man who can predict the future. Directed by Robert
Wiene, the son of a Jewish actor, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari made
extensive use of light, shadow and expressionist styles in its sets and
backdrops. It also featured a ‘twist’ ending, one of the first in movie
history, with the entire story revealed to be the delusional flashback

53
of a mental patient. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aimAeeDx2p4 – and find stills (photos)
of important scenes on google images.
Nosferatu (1922)
Sub-titled Eine Symphonie des Grauens (‘A symphony of
terror’), Nosferatu was the first film of a now-common
genre: the vampire movie. It is ostensibly a retelling of
Bram Stoker’s Dracula, though the characters’ names were
changed. Nosferatu was directed by F. W. Murnau.
Operating on a limited budget with only one camera,
Murnau used light, shadow, time, movement and suspense
to portray horror, rather than complex sets or special
effects. The main character, the vampire Orlok, is a
repulsive rat-like creature, rather than the well-spoken
aristocratic vampires of future films.
Nosferatu has become one of the most famous horror films
of all time. Along with Metropolis, it is considered the
showpiece of German cinematic expressionism and some
of its scenes – such as Orlock’s silhouette ascending a
staircase – have become iconic moments in cinema history. You can watch the trailer here -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxlJxDr26mM – but the whole thing is on YouTube. Remember, the effects might
seem limited to us – but this was one of the first horror movies ever made.

Metropolis (1927)
Probably the best-known German expressionist film (some stills from it are on the front of this booklet), Metropolis is
part-science fiction and part-social allegory. It depicts a future society where citizens have been split into two distinct
classes: the elite, who enjoy lives of leisure in the sun, and the workers, who toil monotonously beneath the ground.
The plot centres on two women: the compassionate Maria, who wants to reconcile the workers with the ruling class;
and the robotic Hel (which means ‘light’ in German), who is programmed to destroy the city.
Metropolis was an incredibly ambitious project for its time. It cost around five million marks, took several months to film
and employed up to 300 extras. It proved unpopular with movie-goers but was critically applauded and is considered a
forerunner to modern science-fiction movies. If you like Star Wars, BladeRunner, or amazing visual art – watch it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-I9FD21k7Cs . Or zoom through and watch some clips.
M (1931)
Also directed by Fritz Lang, M had an extraordinarily dark
storyline for its time, focusing on the activities of a child
murderer and the criminal underclass.
Hans Beckert (played by Peter Lorre) is a paedophile and child
killer, pursued by both police and the Berlin underworld. He is
caught first by the city’s crooks and given a mock trial.
Confronting his captors, Beckert explains what drives him to
commit his crimes, asking: “Who knows what it’s like to be
me?”
M not only made use of expressionist styles but also
introduced cinematic techniques still used in crime movies
today. Even now, watching this film is gripping and shocking,
as this terrifying still (right) shows.

8. THE REACTION TO CULTURAL MODERNISM

54
The cultural creations of the Weimar Republic in furniture, art, architecture, painting, music and film are viewed by
most people today as one of the absolute high points of human creativity. The buildings cannot be altered – they are
protected by heritage laws; the art is in the most famous galleries in the world; the films are revered as classics.
But at the time, many contemporaries did not see them that way. They saw them as an aggressive assault on ‘values’,
‘morals’ and ‘common sense.’ Many people felt that they were an insult to morality and good taste. But even other
Modernists saw in this new style something challenging or damaged, revealing deeper problems in society.
Source A: Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse was a major author in Germany, and went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946. He grew up
in a middle-class, deeply religious Protestant household. He had an idiosyncratic youth, attending a seminary, training as
a mechanic (unusual for a man of his class), and collecting books. He became a successful writer before the First World
War. He signed up for the war, and fought in it, but was critical of it. He was, in many ways, a modernist writer himself –
his most famous novel is Steppenwolf. He despised the NSDAP, and went into exile when they seized power.
This extract comes from an essay he wrote for a successful magazine aimed at the middle classes, Uhu, in 1926.
The Longing of our Time for a Worldview

The new image of the earth’s surface, completely transformed and recast in just a few decades, and the enormous
changes manifest in every city and every landscape of the world since industrialization, correspond to an upheaval in
the human mind and soul. This development has so accelerated in the years since the outbreak of the world war that
one can already, without exaggeration, identify the death and dismantling of the culture into which the elder among us
were raised as children and which then seemed to us eternal and indestructible. If the individual has not himself
changed (he can do this within two generations no more than any animal species could), then at least the ideals and
fictions, the wishes and dreams, and the mythologies and theories that rule our intellectual life have; they have changed
utterly and completely. Irreplaceable things have been lost and destroyed forever; new, unheard-of things are being
imagined in their place. Destroyed and lost for the greater part of the civilized world are, beyond all else, the two
universal foundations of life, culture and morality: religion and customary morals. Our life is lacking in morals, in a
traditional, sacred, unwritten understanding about what is proper and becoming between people.
Source B: Paul Schulze Naumburg
Paul Schulze Naumburg was one of the most famous architects of the Kaiserreich and the 1920s. However, he was not a
modernist (although he was considered cutting edge before the war). He believed that art and architecture should
reflect the traditions of the places they find themselves, and try to learn from the best examples of art and architecture
from across history. In 1928 he published a successful book, Art and Race.
The activities chosen for representation in contemporary art, and which in every art are extremely characteristic of an
era, refer more or less to a physical and moral nadir as well. Were one to name the symbols that find expression in the
majority of the paintings and sculptures of our period, they would be the idiot, the prostitute, and the sagging breast.
One has to call things by their right name. Spreading out here before us is a genuine hell of inferior human beings, and
one sighs in relief upon leaving this atmosphere for the pure air of other cultures—in particular that of antiquity and the
early Renaissance in which a noble race struggled to express its own longings in art. It is necessary to assume that the
reader is acquainted with the representations filling today’s art exhibits and the horror chambers of museums, those
works about which the master advertisers are always crying “unheard of, unheard of.” This book can do no more than
refresh the memory with a few small illustrations and evoke an idea of the world into which the creators of these
pictures are attempting to lead us.

9. TAKE IT FURTHER
Do some research online to find the Weimar literature, art, architecture, music and cinema that interests you and
impresses you most. Print out excerpts, stills, images or reactions from the things you find most significant, most
artistically impressive, most emotionally touching. Annotate these with key names, dates, interpretations,
observations, ideas, reactions.
For further reading see the Lee chapter recommended in section 5 or Peukert: Mass Culture and the Neue Sachlichkeit

55
7 CONSOLIDATION
1. WAS 1924-1928 A GOLDEN AGE FOR THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC?
Draw out the table below and complete it using evidence from across this booklet.
What is your overall verdict on the period 1924-28? What were the biggest strengths? What were the biggest
concerns?

Germany 1924-29 Evidence to suggest it Evidence to suggest Overall Verdict

was a remarkable period serious problems
of recovery

Politics

Economics

Social Policy

Foreign Policy

Culture

2. KEY DEBATES
As you revise select evidence to fit into some of these key debates

Evidence, examples or events Evidence, examples or events

that shows ‘yes’ - WWWWWH that shows ‘no’ - WWWWWH

Were the threats to the Republic in 1923

serious?

Were the problems in 1923 primarily

economic in nature?

Did Stresemann ever stop being a convinced

German nationalist?

Was the Treaty of Versailles inflexible?

Did Germany return to ‘great power’ status

in this period?

Did the German people come to accept the

Treaty of Versailles between 1923-1930?

Did the German economy return to normality

between 1923-29?

56
Were Weimar governments effective at
running the German economy between 1923-
1929?

Was Weimar economic policy unrealistic?

Would ordinary Germans have seen an

improvement in their standard of living
between 1923-29?

Was the Weimar welfare system a failure?

Was the economy the key battleground for

politics between 1923-29?

Was the political system and Reichstag

‘broken’ between 1923-29?

Were the actions of the SPD the most

damaging feature of democratic politics
between 1923-29?

Did extremist thought, ideas and politics

disappear in Germany between 1923-29?

Did the aristocracy, officer corps and rich

industrialists ever sincerely support the
republic?

Was governmental incompetence the main

reason that there was always a substantial
minority of voters who rejected the republic?

Was the aggressive tone and symbolism used

in German politics the main reason so many
people lost confidence in it?

Were Germans opposed more to democracy

itself, than the Republic?

Did ordinary Germans experience the

Weimar Republic as ‘liberating’ between
1923-29?

Were art and culture in Germany

fundamentally elitist and middle-class
between 1923-29??

Was Germany literature typical of the wider

arts between 1923-29?

57
3. PRACTICE EXAM QUESTIONS
- ‘The improvement of Germany’s international position in the years 1924–29 could not have been achieved
without the significant contribution of Gustav Stresemann.’ Assess the validity of this view. (A Level Sample Set
2)
- ‘Stresemann’s achievements were fundamentally economic in nature.’ Do you agree?
- ‘Stresemann’s most conspicuous success was his ability to convince the Allies to revise the Treaty of Versailles.’
Do you agree?
- ‘By 1929 Germany had returned to the community of nations as a full and equal member.’ Assess the validity of
this view.
- ‘Stresemann’s reputation as a man of peace is misplaced.’ Do you agree?
- ‘German foreign policy successes between c. 1923 and c. 1930 were based largely on German acceptance of the
principle of “fulfilment”.’ Assess the validity of this view.
- ‘The domestic consequences of Stresemann’s policies were disastrous between 1923-29’. Do you agree?
- ‘We should not view 1923-24 as a turning point in the economic history of the Weimar Republic; the
fundamental problems remained the same until 1929.’ Do you agree?
- ‘The German economy between 1924-29 recovered sufficiently to quell serious social and political conflict.’
Assess the validity of this view.
- ‘There was no “Golden Era” of the Weimar economy.’ Assess the validity of this view.
- ‘The achievements of the Weimar economy between 1924-29, particularly in the field of improving standards of
living and welfare, were remarkable.’ Were they?
- ‘The key weakness of the Weimar economy between 1924-29 was its reliance on debt.’ Was it?
- How far was the improved economic and political stability of the Weimar Republic, in the years 1923 to 1925,
due to Gustav Stresemann? (A Level 2017)
- ‘By 1928, the Weimar Republic was both economically prosperous and politically stable.’ Assess the validity of
this view. (A Level Sample Set 1)
- ‘The Weimar Republic failed to achieve political stability in the years 1924 to 1928.’ Assess the validity of this
view. (AS 2017, AS 2018 – same question but for economic stability)
- ‘The Presidential Election of 1925 was a blow for Weimar Democracy.’ Assess the validity of this view in
relation to the years 1924-1929.
- ‘The most damaging political trend facing Weimar Politics in this period was the electoral decline of the liberals.’
Assess the validity of this view.
- ‘A Republic without Republicans.’ Is this a fair assessment of Weimar Germany in the years 1924-1928.
- ‘Support for the Weimar Republic was always limited by nostalgia and the desire for authoritarian government.’
Do you agree?
- How far do you agree that the decline of liberalism was the most dangerous political trend in German politics
during this period.
- ‘For most Germans, the 1920s were an era of unprecedented tolerance and personal freedom.’ Assess the
validity of this view.
- ‘Society and social life changed little in the years 1924-29.’ Assess the validity of this view.
- ‘Weimar society between 1924-9 was marked by social transformation and liberty.’ Assess the validity of this
view
- ‘By 1930, the Jews had become fully assimilated into German society’ Assess the validity of this view.
- ‘The status of women and/or young people was transformed in the Weimar Republic between 1924-1929.’ Do
you agree?
- Was there a ‘new woman’ in Weimar Germany?
- ‘Changes in German society in the years 1924 to 1928 did much to heal post-war social discontent.’
- To what extent was there a social and cultural revolution during the Golden years of the Weimar Republic?
- ‘Weimar culture tells us little about politics and society in this period.’ Do you agree?
- ‘German culture in this period accurately reflected the realities of German politics and society.’ Assess the
validity of this view.
- ‘The arts in Weimar Germany fundamentally undermined support for the Republic.’ Do you agree?

58
- ‘Weimar Germany in the 1920s was seen as culturally rich primarily because of its writers.’ Assess the validity of
this view.
- ‘German culture, design and art was overwhelmingly rejected by the people it was meant to serve.’ Assess the
validity of this view.
- ‘The most important feature of the arts in Germany between 1924-29 is the freedom and change they offered
for ordinary Germans.’ Assess the validity of this view.

59