Weimar culture

Weimar Republic refers to the years (1919-1933) in the German history. Politically and economically, the nation struggled with the terms and reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles (1918) that ended World War I, and endured punishing levels of inflation. 1920s Berlin was at the hectic center of the Weimar culture.

The fourteen years of the Weimar era were also marked by explosive intellectual productivity. German artists made significant cultural contributions in the fields of literature, art, architecture, music, dance, drama, and the new medium of the motion picture. Political theorist Ernst Bloch described Weimar culture as a "Periclean Age".

Weimar culture encompassed the political caricature of Otto Dix and John Heartfield and George Grosz, the futuristic skyscraper dystopia of Fritz Lang's 1927 film "Metropolis" and other products of the UFA studio, the beginnings of a new architectural style at the Bauhaus and the mass housing projects of Ernst May and Bruno Taut, and the decadent cabaret culture of Berlin documented by Christopher Isherwood.

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. The theatres of Berlin and Frankfurt am Main were graced with drama by Bertolt Brecht, cabaret, and stage direction by Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator. Concert halls and conservatories exhibited the atonal and modern music of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Kurt Weill.

During the era of the Weimar Republic, Germany became a center of intellectual thought at its medieval universities, and most notably social and political theory (especially Marxism) was combined with Freudian psychoanalysis to form the highly influential discipline of Critical Theory—with its development at the Institute for Social Research (also known as the Frankfurt School) founded at the University of Frankfurt am Main.

With the rise of Nazism and the ascension of Adolf Hitler to power in 1933, many German intellectuals and cultural figures fled Germany for Turkey, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other parts of the world. Those who remained behind were often arrested, or detained in concentration camps. The intellectuals associated with the Institute for Social Research (also known as the Frankfurt School) fled to the United States and reestablished the Institute at the New School for Social Research in New York City.

In the words of Marcus Bullock,professor of English at UW-Milwaukee, "Remarkable for the way it emerged from a catastrophe, more remarkable for the way it vanished into a still greater catastrophe, the world of Weimar represents modernism in its most vivid manifestation."

Notable Cultural Figures of the Weimar Era

Art

* Ernst Barlach – sculptor
* Max Beckmann – painter, printmaker
* Otto Dix – painter
* Max Ernst – painter
* Conrad Felixmueller – painter
* George Grosz – painter
* John Heartfield – photomontage artist
* Erich Heckel – painter
* Herbert Bayer – painter and designer
* Käthe Kollwitz – printmaker, sculptor, artist
* Wassily Kandinsky – painter
* Ernst Ludwig Kirchner – painter
* Paul Klee – painter
* Gerhard Marcks – sculptor, woodcuts, lithographer, ceramics
* Otto Mueller – painter
* Gabriele Munter – painter
* Emil Nolde – painter
* Max Pechstein – painter
* Karl Schmidt-Rottluff – painter
* Kurt Schwitters – painter
* Hannah Höch – photomontage artist

Architecture

* Peter Behrens – architect
* Walter Gropius – architect, founder of the Bauhaus
* Hugo Häring – architect
* Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky – the first female architect in Austria and designer of the Frankfurt kitchen
* Ernst May – architect
* Erich Mendelsohn – architect
* Adolf Meyer – architect
* Hans Poelzig – architect
* Bruno Taut – architect and city planner
* Mies van der Rohe – architect

Literature

* Gottfried Benn – poet
* Bertolt Brecht – playwright ("The Threepenny Opera")
* Alfred Döblin – novelist ("Berlin Alexanderplatz")
* Stefan George – poet ("The New Empire")
* Hermann Hesse – novelist ("Siddhartha")
* Christopher Isherwood – novelist
* Ernst Jünger – novelist ("The Storm of Steel")
* Erich Kästner&ndash novelist and poet ("Drei Männer im Schnee")
* Heinrich Mann – novelist ("Der Untertan")
* Klaus Mann – novelist ("Mephisto")
* Thomas Mann – novelist ("Death in Venice")
* Erich Mühsam – poet, playwright, anarchist
* Erich Maria Remarque – novelist ("All Quiet on the Western Front")
* Anna Seghers – novelist
* Kurt Tucholsky – satirist

Music

* Alban Berg – composer ("Wozzeck")
* Paul Hindemith – composer, violist ("Mathis der Maler")
* Otto Klemperer – conductor and composer
* Arnold Schoenberg – composer ("Transfigured Night")
* Anton Webern – composer
* Kurt Weill – composer ("The Threepenny Opera")

Philosophy and Theory

* Theodor W. Adorno – critical theorist
* Walter Benjamin – critical theorist
* Martin Buber – philosopher ("I and Thou")
* Martin Heidegger – philosopher ("Being and Time")
* Max Horkheimer – critical theorist
* Max Weber – political theorist

cience

* Max Born – physicist, founder of quantum mechanics
* Albert Einstein – physicist
* Werner Heisenberg – physicist, founder of quantum mechanics
* Pascual Jordan – physicist, founder of quantum mechanics

Theater and Film

* Alfred Abel – actor
* Anita Berber – actress
* Lil Dagover – actress
* Marlene Dietrich – actress
* Arnold Fanck – director, producer and editor of Mountain films
* Carl Froelich – director
* Greta Garbo – actress
* Thea von Harbou – screenwriter, actress
* Brigitte Helm – actress
* Fritz Lang – filmmaker ("Metropolis")
* Ernst Lubitsch – film director
* Erika Mann – theatre producer, playwright, journalist, cabaret and film actress.
* Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau – filmmaker ("Nosferatu")
* Pola Negri – actress
* Erwin Piscator – theatre and film producer
* Erich Pommer – film producer
* Max Reinhardt – theatre producer
* Lotte Reiniger – pioneering animator
* Hans Richter – filmmaker, actor, writer
* Leni Riefenstahl – dancer, actress, and film director
* Walther Ruttmann – director ("Opus" series, "Berlin: Symphony of a Great City")
* Leontine Sagan – actress and filmmaker "Mädchen in Uniform" (1931)
* Josef von Sternberg – filmmaker "The Salvation Hunters" (1925), "The Blue Angel" (1930))
* Conrad Veidt – actor
* Robert Wiene – director ("The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari")

ee also

* 1920s Berlin
* Aftermath of World War I
* Bauhaus
* Cabaret
* Cinema of Germany
* Critical Theory
* Culture of Germany
* Dada
* Degenerate art
* Expressionism
* Frankfurt School
* Futurism
* Germany
* German Expressionism
* Gleichschaltung
* Glitter and Doom - Exhibit of Art in the Weimar Rebpulic
* Glossary of the Weimar Republic
* History of Germany
* Kultur
* Literature of World War I
* Lost Generation
* Modernism
* Nazi Germany
* New Objectivity
* Post-WWI recession
* Post-expressionism
* Surrealism
* Weimar Republic
* Weimar Timeline
* Weimaraner
* World War I