Seminar Questions:

• To what extent were the mid-late 1920s 'Golden' for Germany?

• What fears and anxieties haunted Germany in the mid-1920s?

• In what ways does the boom of arts and architecture add to our understanding of Weimar Germany?

Reading List:

Required Reading:

• Matthew Stibbe, Germany, 1914-1933: Politics, Society and Culture (Taylor & Francis, 2010), Chapters 4 and 5

Primary Sources:

• The New Woman
• 'Enough is Enough! Against the Masulinization of Women!'
• Otto Bauer, 'The Nature of Rationalisation' (1931)
• Felix Gilbert, Berlin as a Cultural Capital
• Hans Ostwald, 'A Moral History of the Inflation' (1931)

Further Reading:

General Accounts of Weimar Culture:

• Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (Norton, 2001)
• Walter Laqueur, Weimar: A Cultural History, 1918-1933 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974)
• Thomas W. Kniesche, Stephen Brockmann (eds.), Dancing on the volcano: essays on the culture of the Weimar Republic (Camden House, 1994)
• John A. Williams (ed.), Weimar Culture Revisited (Palgrave, 2011)
• Seigfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: a psychological history of the German film (Princeton, 2004)
• Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (Richard Deveson, trans.) (Penguin, 1993), Chapters 8 and 9
• Elizabeth Harvey, 'Culture and Society in Weimar Germany: The Impact of Modernism and Mass Culture' in Mary Fulbrook (ed.), German History since 1800 (Arnold, 1997)
• Anthony McElligott (ed.), Rethinking the Weimar Republic (Bloomsbury, 2014), Chapter 6

The Economy and Social Class:

• Germany: Memories of a Nation - Money in Crisis (BBC podcast)
• Theo Baldeson, Politics and Economics in the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, 2002).
• Harold James, 'The Weimar Economy' in A. McElligott (ed.), Weimar Germany (Oxford 2009), pp. 102‐126
• Adam Fergusson, When Money Dies: The Nightmare of the Weimar Collapse (William Kimber, 1975)
• Gerald Feldman, The Great Disorder: Politics, Economics and Society in the German Inflation, 1914-1924 (OUP, 1997)
• Seigfried Kracauer, The salaried masses: duty and distraction in Weimar Germany (Verso, 1998)
• Anthony McElligott, Rethinking the Weimar Republic (Bloomsbury, 2014), Chapter 4
• William C. McNeil, American Money and the Weimar Republic (Columbia University Press, 1986)
• A. Ritschel, ''Dancing on a Volcano': The Economic Recovery and Collapse of Weimar Germany 1924-33' in Theo Balderston (ed.), The World Economy and National Economies in the Interwar Slump (Palgrave, 2003)
• Eric Weitz, Weimar Germany (Princeton, 2007), Chapter 4
• Bernd Widdig, Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany (University of California Press, 2001)
• Colin Storer, A Short History of the Weimar Republic (2013), Chapter 3

Gender:

• K. von Ankum (ed.), Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Modernity in Weimar Culture (1997).
• Helen Boak, Women in the Weimar Republic (Palgrave, 2013)

• Donna-Marie Bohan, 'Gender as a destabilising factor of Weimar society', History Studies, vol. 13 (2012)

• Kathleen Canning, 'Women and the Politics of Gender' in A. McElligott (ed.), Weimar Germany (OUP, 2009), pp.127‐145
• Sasha Disko, The Devil's wheels: men and motorcycling in the Weimar Republic (Berghahn Books, 2016)
• Anita Grossmann, (1983) 'The New Woman and the Rationalization of Sexuality in Weimar Germany' in: A. Snitow, C. Stansell, & S. Thompson, (eds.) Powers of desire: the politics of sexuality (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), pp. 153-171
• Anita Grossmamm, 'Continuities and Ruptures. Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Germany: Historiography and its Discontents' in Karen Hagemann and Jean H. Quataert (eds.), Gendering Modern German History: Rewriting Historiography (Berghahn, 2008), pp. 208-227 (especially pp. 211-215)
• Jochen Hung, 'The Modernized Gretchen: Transformations of the ‘New Woman’ in the late Weimar Republic', German History (2015) 33 (1), pp. 52-79
• Patrice Petro, Joyless Streets: Women and Melodramatic Representation in Weimar Germany (Princeton UP, 1989).
• Julia Roos, Weimar through the Lens of Gender: Prostitution Reform, Woman's Emancipation, and German Democracy, 1919-1933 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010).

• Dorothy Rowe, “Desiring Berlin: Gender and modernity in Weimar Germany,” in Marsha Meskimmon and Shearer West (eds.), Visions of the “Neue Frau:” Women and the Visual Arts in Weimar Germany (Menston, England: Scolar Press, 1995): 143-164

• Jill Suzanne Smith, 'Prostitutes in Weimar Berlin: Moving Beyond the Victim‐Whore Dichotomy' in J. Hung, G. Weiss‐Sussex & G. Wilkes (eds.), Beyond Glitter and Doom: The Contingency of the Weimar Republic (2012), pp. 135-147.
• Geoff Wilkes, 'Beneath the Glitter: Berlin, the New Woman and Mass-Market Fiction in Vicki Baum's Menschen im Hotel' in Jochen Hung, Godela Weiss-Sussex, Geoff Wilkes (eds.), Beyond glitter and doom : the contingency of the Weimar Republic (Iudicium, 2012), pp. 148-161

Sexuality:

• Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin : birthplace of a modern identity (Knopf, 2014)
• Richard Dyer, 'Less and More than Women and Men: Lesbian and Gay Cinema in Weimar Germany', New German Critique, No. 51 (1990), pp. 5-60
• J. Kollenbroich, Our Hour Has Come: The Homosexual Rights Movement in the Weimar Republic (VDM Verlag, 2007).
• Laurie Marhoefer, Sex and the Weimar Republic: German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis (University of Toronto Press, 2015)
• ______________, “Degeneration, Sexual Freedom, and the Politics of the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933.” German Studies Review, Vol. 34, No. 3 (2011): 529-550
• ______________, '"The book was a revelation, I recognized myself in it": Lesbian Sexuality, Censorship, and the Queer Press in Weimar-era Germany.' Journal of Women's History 27:2 (2015): 62-86

• Glenn Ramsey, 'The Rites of Artgenossen: Contesting Homosexual Political Culture in Weimar Germany', Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2008), pp. 85-109

Crime and Punishment:

• Eva Bischoff & Daniel Siemens, 'Class, Youth, and Sexuality in the Construction of Lustmorder: The 1928 Murder Trial of Karl Hussmann' in Richard F. Wetzell (ed.), Crime and criminal justice in modern Germany (Berghahn, 2014), pp. 207-225
• Sace Elder, Murder Scenes: Normality, Deviance, and Criminal Violence in Weimar Berlin (University of Michigan Press, 2010)
• _________, 'Prostitutes, Respectable Women, and Women from "Outside": The Carl Grossmann Sexual Murder Case in Postwar Berlin' in Richard F. Wetzell (ed.), Crime and criminal justice in modern Germany (Berghahn, 2014), pp. 185-206
• Christian Goeschel, 'The Criminal Underworld in Weimar and Nazi Berlin', History Workshop Journal, Vol. 75, Spring (2013), pp. 58-80
• Sara Hall, 'Nurturing the New Republic: The Contested Feminizationof Law Enforcement in Weimar Culture' in Klaus Mladek (ed.), Police Forces: A Cultural History of an Institution (Palgrave, 2007), pp. 77-96

• Arthur Hartmann & Klaus von Lampe, 'The German underworld and the Ringvereine from the 1890s through the 1950s', Global Crime, Vol. 9, Nos. 1-2 (2008), pp. 108-135

• Todd Herzog, 'A City Tracks a Murderer: Mass Murder and Mass Publicin Weimar German' in Klaus Mladek (ed.), Police Forces: A Cultural History of an Institution (Palgrave, 2007), pp. 97-122
• __________, Crime Stories: Criminalistic Fantasy and the Culture of Crisis in Weimar Germany (Beghahn, 2009)
• Hsi-huey Liang, The Berlin police force in the Weimar Republic (University of California Press, 1970)
• Anthony McElligott, Rethinking the Weimar Republic (Bloomsbury, 2014), Chapter 5
• Maria Tartar, Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany (Princeton, 1995)
• Nikolaus Wachsmann, 'Between Reform and Repression: Imprisonment in Weimar Germany' in Richard F. Wetzell (ed.), Crime and criminal justice in modern Germany (Berghahn, 2014), pp. 115-136
• Heather Wolffram, 'Crime, Clairvoyance and the Weimar Police', Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 44, No. 4 (2009), pp. 581-601

Sport and Physical Culture:

• David Bathrick, 'Max Schmeling on the Canvas: Boxing as an Icon of Weimar Culture', New German Critique, No. 51 (1990), pp. 113-136
• Nadine Rossol, Performing the nation in interwar Germany: Sport, spectacle and political symbolism, 1926-36 (Palgrave, 2010)
• Jon Hughes, '"Im Sport ist der Nerv der Zeit selber zu spüren": Sport and Cultural Debate in the Weimar Republic', GHL Journal (2007)
• David Imhoof, 'The Game of Political Change: Sports in Göttingen during the Weimar and Nazi Eras', German History, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2009), pp. 374–394
• Erik Jensen, Body by Weimar: athletes, gender, and German modernity (OUP, 2010)
• Erik Jensen, 'Sweat Equity: Sports and the Self-Made German' in J. A. Williams(ed.), Weimar Culture Revisited (Palgrave, 2011), pp. 23-48

Cinema, Boardcasting and Mass Culture:

• The Sound of Weimar Germany - Playlist of music and songs from the Weimar Republic
• Stephen Brockmann, A critical history of German film (Camden House, 2010), Part Two
• Thomas Elsaesser, Weimar cinema and after: Germany's historical imaginary (Routledge, 2000)
• Karl Christian Führer, 'A Medium of Modernity? Broadcasting in Weimar Germany, 1923–1932', Journal of Modern History, Vol. 69, No. 4 (1997), pp. 722-753
• N. Isenberg (ed.), Weimar Cinema (Columbia Uni. Press, 2009).
• Thomas G. Plummer et al (eds.), Film and Politics in the Weimar Republic (Holmes & Meier, 1982).
• J. Bradford Robinson, 'Jazz Reception in Weimar Germany: In Search of a Shimmy Figure' in Bryan Gilliam (ed.), Music and performance during the Weimar Republic (Cambrdige, 1994)
• Corey Ross, 'Cinema, Radio and "Mass Culture" in the Weimar Republic: Between Shared Experience and Social Division' in J. A. Williams(ed.), Weimar Culture Revisited (Palgrave, 2011), pp. 23-48
• Thomas J. Saunders, Hollywood in Berlin: American cinema and Weimar Germany (University of California Press, 1994)
• Jonathan O. Wipplinger, The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany (University of Michigan Press, 2017)

Literature, Art and Architecture and the Avant-Garde:

• Jane Michael, Splendour and Misery in the Weimar Republic (Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; Hirmer, 2017)
• George Economou Collection, Magic Realism (Tate, 2018)
• Elizabeth Boa, 'Women Writers in the "Golden Twenties"' in Graham Bartram (ed.), The Cambridge companion to the modern German novel (Cambridge, 2004)
• Deborah Ascher Barnstone, Beyond the Bauhuas: Cultural Modernity in Breslau, 1918-33 (University of Michigan Press, 2016)
• Peter Fritzsche, ‘Landscape of Danger, Landscape of Design: Crisis and Modernism in Weimar Germany’, in Kniesche and Brockmann (eds.), Dancing on the Volcano: Essays on the Culture of the Weimar Republic (Camden House, 1994): pp. 24‐46.
• Andreas Huyssen, ‘Mass Culture as Woman: Modernism's Other’, After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Indiana Univ. Press, 1986).
• Michael Minden, 'The First World War and its aftermath in the German novel' in Graham Bartram (ed.), The Cambridge companion to the modern German novel (Cambridge, 2004)
• Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (Princeton, 2007), especially Chapters 6 and 7.