HIST 2509 A History of Germany

Lecture W3-2

The 1920s

TA Office Hours

Meaghan Harris (L-Z 2% applied to final grade)

Email: emharris@connect.carleton.ca

437 Paterson Hall

Friday January 20 1:00-2:30

Tuesday January 24 11:30-1:00

TA Office Hours

Margaret Watts (A-K 2% not applied -- I will do this on spreadsheet, no worries!)

Email: mwatts@connect.carleton.ca

1302 Dunton Tower

Wednesday January 18, 25 12-1pm

Friday January 20, 27 10-11am

Today’s Main Themes

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

“decadent” and “ungerman”

I. The Face of Defeat

a. The revolution of 1918/19

b. b. the Weimar Constitution – the Basic Law

-women’s suffrage

-universal manhood suffrage

c.  the Versailles Diktat

-Wilson’s 14 points

-the dictated peace

-reparations

-John Maynard Keynes

September 1, 1923

A woman feeds a stovepipe with RMFrom the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Archive

II. Political Unrest

a. putsches and coups

b. assassinations

c. inflation

d. reparations and Ruhr occupation

e. gradual international acceptance at least for a time

-Kapp-Putsch 1920, Luettzow Putsch

-Beer Hall 1923

-Thuringia

and Saxony

a. putsches and coups

Kapp-Putschists spreading leaflets in front of Reichs Chancellery in Berlin DHM Berlin, 13. März 1920

b. assassinations

Enzenberger Rathenau

Eisner

-Ruhr and Rhineland

-passive resistance

-Rhineland Bastards

Hands off the Ruhr!

Anti-French placard

by Theo Matejko

from 1923

DHM

c. inflation 1923d. reparations and occupation

-Locarno, Dawes, Young Plans

-the infirm

-600,000 war widows

-2.7 million veterans

-6 million children

lost one or both parents

-rift between l and r gone?

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

From the series, Victims of the First World War, 1933

until 1924:

-hunger still a feature of life

-pacifism vs. militarism

(Stahlhelm, veterans organizations)

-anti-semitism in wake of war

f. integration: healing of past wounds?

Germany’s Children are Starving, by Käthe Kollwitz, 1924

III. Weimar Culture(s)

a. experimentalism in art and life

Potsdamer Platz, Berlin1925

III. Weimar Culture(s)

a. experimentalism in art and life

-Neue Sachlichkeit (new sobriety)

-veterans but angered by the war

-Georg Grosz and Otto Dix

*seen as communist, Jewish, and decadent by right

Otto Dix soldier, veteran, artist

Anti-war themes

Otto Dix, Gas Attack, 1925

Otto Dix, Mealtime in the Trenches, 1923/34

Otto Dix, Mealtime in the Trenches, 1923/34

Georg Grosz, artist, communist

Social Critique

Georg GroszRepublican Automatons, 1920

Social Critique

Georg GroszLife in Berlin, 1930

Sexuality and Modernity

Otto DixThe Metropolis, 1917

Sexuality and Modernity

Otto Dix

Sexuality and Modernity

Graf St. Genois d’AnneaucourtChristian Schad1927

Sexuality and Modernity

Christian SchadSelf Portrait with Nude1927

Sexuality and Modernity

Otto Dix,The French Journalist1927

Bauhaus

Walter Gropius

Film -- German Expressionism

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920