Weimar culture
Encyclopedia

Weimar culture was a flourishing of the arts and sciences that happened during the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...

 (between Germany's defeat at the end of World War I in 1918, and Hitler's rise to power in 1933). This period is frequently cited as one of those with the highest level of intellectual production in human history; Germany was the country with the most advanced science, technology, literature, philosophy and art. 1920s Berlin
1920s Berlin
The Golden Twenties in Berlin was a vibrant period in the history of Berlin, German history, and European history in general.-Weimar culture:...

 was at the hectic center of the Weimar culture. Although not part of the Weimar Republic, some authors also include the German speaking Austria, and particularly Vienna, as part of Weimar culture.

In Science, Heisenberg formulated the famous Uncertainty principle
Uncertainty principle
In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states a fundamental limit on the accuracy with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known...

, and, with Max Born
Max Born
Max Born was a German-born physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s...

 and Pascual Jordan
Pascual Jordan
-Further reading:...

, made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...

; Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...

 revolutionized painting and his lectures on modern art
Paul Klee Notebooks
Paul Klee Notebooks is a two volume work by Paul Klee that collects his lectures at the Bauhaus schools in the 1920s Germany and his other main essays on modern art...

 at the Bauhaus have been compared for importance to Leonardo's Treatise on Painting and Newton's Principia Mathematica
Principia Mathematica
The Principia Mathematica is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913...

, constituting the Principia Aesthetica of a new era of art; the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

 school by Walter Gropius founded modern architecture; in philosophy, Husserl and Heidegger revolutionised our way of thinking with their method of phenomenology and the publication of Heidegger's own Being and Time
Being and Time
Being and Time is a book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly...

, the neo-Marxist sociology developed by Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...

 dominated the field in much of Europe; the avant-garde theater of Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

 and Max Reinhardt in Berlin was the most advanced in Europe, being rivaled only by that of Paris. While Rudolf von Laban and Mary Wigman
Mary Wigman
Mary Wigman was a German dancer, choreographer, and dance instructor.A pioneer of expressionist dance, her work was hailed for bringing the deepest of existential experiences to the stage...

 laid the foundations for the development of Contemporary dance
Contemporary dance
Contemporary dance is a genre of concert dance that employs compositional philosophy, rather than choreography, to guide unchoreographed movement...

.

If we also include the German speaking Vienna, during the Weimar years Mathematician Kurt Gödel
Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician and philosopher. Later in his life he emigrated to the United States to escape the effects of World War II. One of the most significant logicians of all time, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the...

 published his groundbreaking Incompleteness Theorem
Gödel's incompleteness theorems
Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that establish inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems capable of doing arithmetic. The theorems, proven by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of...

; and cultural critic Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus
Karl Kraus was an Austrian writer and journalist, known as a satirist, essayist, aphorist, playwright and poet. He is regarded as one of the foremost German-language satirists of the 20th century, especially for his witty criticism of the press, German culture, and German and Austrian...

, with his brilliantly controversial magazine Die Fackel, advanced the field of satirical journalism, becoming the literary and political conscience of this era.

With the rise of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

 and the ascent to power of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 in 1933, many German intellectuals and cultural figures fled Germany for 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
Institute for Social Research
The Institute for Social Research is a research organization for sociology and continental philosophy, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School and critical theory....

 (also known as the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...

) fled to the United States and reestablished the Institute at the New School for Social Research in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

In the words of Marcus Bullock, Emeritus Professor of English at University of Wisconsin–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
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

 in its most vivid manifestation." The culture of the Weimar year was later reprised by the left-wing intellectuals of the 1960s, especially in France. Deleuze, Guattari and Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

 reprised Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry...

; Derrida reprised Husserl and Heidegger; Guy Debord
Guy Debord
Guy Ernest Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, member of the Letterist International, founder of a Letterist faction, and founding member of the Situationist International . He was also briefly a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie.-Early Life:Guy Debord was born in Paris in 1931...

 and the Situationist International reprised the subversive-revolutionary culture.

Social environment

By 1919, an "influx" of labor had migrated to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 turning it into one of the most fertile grounds for the modern arts and sciences in history. The population of the German Reich rose from 900,000 to 2.7 million between the years of 1875 and 1900. This caused "a boom in trade, communications and construction." The advancement was so tremendous that it significantly turned over the ways of the royalty. In response to the shortage of pre-war accommodation and housing, tenements were constructed not very far from the Kaiser's Stadtschloss and all the other majestic structures that were erected in honor of former royalties. People used their backyards and basements to run small shops, restaurants, workshops and haulage carts. This led to the establishment of bigger and better commerce in Berlin, including its first department stores, prior to World War I. An "urban petty bourgeoisie
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...

" along with the middle class colonized and flourished the wholesale commerce, retail trade, factories and crafts.

The Wilheminian values
German Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

 were further discredited as consequence of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and the subsequent inflation, since the new youth generation saw no point in saving for marriage in such conditions, and preferred instead to spend and enjoy. According to cultural historian Bruce Thompson, Fritz Lang movie Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) captures Berlin's postwar mood:

Politically and economically, the nation was struggling with the terms and reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles
Treaty of Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...

 (1918) that ended World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 and endured punishing levels of inflation.

Sociology

During the era of the Weimar Republic, Germany became a center of intellectual thought at its universities, and most notably social
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 and political theory (especially Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...

) was combined with Freudian
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

 psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

 to form the highly influential discipline of Critical Theory
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...

—with its development at the Institute for Social Research
Institute for Social Research
The Institute for Social Research is a research organization for sociology and continental philosophy, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School and critical theory....

 (also known as the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...

) founded at the University of Frankfurt am Main
Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main
The Goethe University Frankfurt was founded in 1914 as a Citizens' University, which means that, while it was a State university of Prussia, it had been founded and financed by the wealthy and active liberal citizenry of Frankfurt am Main, a unique feature in German university history...

.

The most prominent philosophers with which the so-called 'Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...

' is associated were Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...

, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...

, Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...

 and Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer was a German-Jewish philosopher-sociologist, famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment...

. Among the prominent philosophers not associated with the Frankfurt School were Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...

 and Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...

.

Science

Many foundational contributions to quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...

 were made in Weimar Germany or by German scientists during the Weimar period. While temporarily at the University of Copenhagen, German physicist Werner Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
Werner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory...

 formulated his famous Uncertainty principle
Uncertainty principle
In quantum mechanics, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states a fundamental limit on the accuracy with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, such as position and momentum, can be simultaneously known...

, and, with Max Born
Max Born
Max Born was a German-born physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s...

 and Pascual Jordan
Pascual Jordan
-Further reading:...

, accomplished the first complete and correct definition of quantum mechanics, through the invention of Matrix mechanics
Matrix mechanics
Matrix mechanics is a formulation of quantum mechanics created by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, and Pascual Jordan in 1925.Matrix mechanics was the first conceptually autonomous and logically consistent formulation of quantum mechanics. It extended the Bohr Model by describing how the quantum jumps...

.

Art

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
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

, architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...

, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

, drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

, and the new medium of the motion picture. Political theorist Ernst Bloch
Ernst Bloch
Ernst Bloch was a German Marxist philosopher.Bloch was influenced by both Hegel and Marx and, as he always confessed, by novelist Karl May. He was also interested in music and art . He established friendships with Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Theodor W. Adorno...

 described Weimar culture as a Periclean Age
Pericles
Pericles was a prominent and influential statesman, orator, and general of Athens during the city's Golden Age—specifically, the time between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars...

.

Kirkus reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month...

 remarked upon how much Weimar art was political:

Weimar culture encompassed the political caricature of Otto Dix
Otto Dix
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of Weimar society and the brutality of war. Along with George Grosz, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.-Early life and...

 and John Heartfield
John Heartfield
John Heartfield is the anglicized name of the German photomontage artist Helmut Herzfeld...

 and George Grosz
George Grosz
Georg Ehrenfried Groß was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s...

, the futuristic skyscraper dystopia of Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...

's 1927 film Metropolis and other products of the UFA
Universum Film AG
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945...

 studio, the beginnings of a new architectural style at the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

 and the mass housing projects of Ernst May
Ernst May
Ernst May was a German architect and city planner.May successfully applied urban design techniques to the city of Frankfurt am Main during Germany's Weimar period, and in 1930 less successfully exported those ideas to Soviet Union cities, newly created under Stalinist rule...

 and Bruno Taut
Bruno Taut
Bruno Julius Florian Taut , was a prolific German architect, urban planner and author active during the Weimar period....

, and the decadent cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 culture of Berlin documented by Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...

. Isherwood's novel Goodbye to Berlin
Goodbye to Berlin
Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 short novel by Christopher Isherwood set in pre-Nazi Germany. It is often published together with Mr Norris Changes Trains in a collection called The Berlin Stories.-Details:...

has been later transposed to the musical movie Cabaret
Cabaret (musical)
Cabaret is a musical based on a book written by Christopher Isherwood, music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions....

.

Writers such as Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin
Alfred Döblin was a German expressionist novelist, best known for the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz .- 1878–1918:...

, Erich Maria Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque was a German author, best known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front.-Life and work:...

 and the brothers Heinrich
Heinrich Mann
Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...

 and Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...

 presented a bleak look at the world and the failure of politics and society through literature. The theatres of Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 and Frankfurt am Main were graced with drama by Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

, cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

, and stage direction by Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt (theatre director)
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...

 and Erwin Piscator
Erwin Piscator
Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator was a German theatre director and producer and, with Bertolt Brecht, the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or on the production's formal...

. Concert halls and conservatories exhibited the atonal and modern music
Modernism (music)
Modernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with the past or common practice.- Defining musical modernism :...

 of Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

, Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

, and Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

.

Visual arts

  • Ernst Barlach
    Ernst Barlach
    Ernst Barlach was a German expressionist sculptor, printmaker and writer. Although he was a supporter of the war in the years leading to World War I, his participation in the war made him change his position, and he is mostly known for his sculptures protesting against the war...

     – sculptor
  • Max Beckmann
    Max Beckmann
    Max Beckmann was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement...

     – painter, printmaker
  • Otto Dix
    Otto Dix
    Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of Weimar society and the brutality of war. Along with George Grosz, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.-Early life and...

     – painter
  • Max Ernst
    Max Ernst
    Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

     – painter
  • Conrad Felixmueller – painter
  • George Grosz
    George Grosz
    Georg Ehrenfried Groß was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s...

     – painter
  • August Sander
    August Sander
    August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer. Sander's first book Face of our Time was published in 1929...

     – photographer
  • John Heartfield
    John Heartfield
    John Heartfield is the anglicized name of the German photomontage artist Helmut Herzfeld...

     – photomontage artist
  • Erich Heckel
    Erich Heckel
    Erich Heckel was a German painter and printmaker, and a founding member of the Die Brücke group which existed 1905-1913.-Biography:Heckel was born in Döbeln . His parents were born in Saxony...

     – painter
  • Herbert Bayer
    Herbert Bayer
    Herbert Bayer was an Austrian American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental & interior designer, and architect, who was widely recognized as the last living member of the Bauhaus and was instrumental in the development of the Atlantic Richfield Company's...

     – painter and designer
  • Käthe Kollwitz
    Käthe Kollwitz
    Käthe Kollwitz was a German painter, printmaker, and sculptor whose work offered an eloquent and often searing account of the human condition in the first half of the 20th century...

     – printmaker, sculptor, artist
  • Wassily Kandinsky
    Wassily Kandinsky
    Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...

     – painter
  • Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
    Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
    Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a German expressionist painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expressionism in 20th century art. He volunteered for army service in the First World War, but soon suffered a...

     – painter
  • Paul Klee
    Paul Klee
    Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...

     – painter
  • Gerhard Marcks
    Gerhard Marcks
    Gerhard Marcks was a German sculptor, who is also well-known for his drawings, woodcuts, lithographs and ceramics.-Background:...

     – sculptor, woodcuts, lithographer, ceramics
  • Otto Mueller
    Otto Mueller
    Otto Mueller or Müller was a German painter and printmaker of the Die Brücke expressionist movement.-Life and work:...

     – painter
  • Gabriele Münter
    Gabriele Münter
    Gabriele Münter was a German expressionist painter who was at the forefront of the Munich avant-garde in the early 20th century. Artists and writers associated with German Expressionism shared a rebellious attitude toward the materialism and mores of German imperial and bourgeois society...

     – painter
  • Emil Nolde
    Emil Nolde
    Emil Nolde was a German painter and printmaker. He was one of the first Expressionists, a member of Die Brücke, and is considered to be one of the great oil painting and watercolour painters of the 20th century. He is known for his vigorous brushwork and expressive choice of colors...

     – painter
  • Max Pechstein
    Max Pechstein
    Hermann Max Pechstein was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke group.-Life and career:...

     – painter
  • Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
    Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
    Karl Schmidt-Rottluff was a German expressionist painter and printmaker, and a member of Die Brücke.-Life and work:...

     – painter
  • Kurt Schwitters
    Kurt Schwitters
    Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...

     – painter
  • Hannah Höch
    Hannah Höch
    Hannah Höch was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage.-Biography:...

     – photomontage artist

Literature

  • Gottfried Benn
    Gottfried Benn
    Gottfried Benn was a German essayist, novelist, and expressionist poet. A doctor of medicine, he became an early admirer, and later a critic, of the National Socialist revolution...

     – poet
  • Bertolt Brecht
    Bertolt Brecht
    Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

     – playwright (The Threepenny Opera)
  • Alfred Döblin
    Alfred Döblin
    Alfred Döblin was a German expressionist novelist, best known for the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz .- 1878–1918:...

     – novelist (Berlin Alexanderplatz)
  • Stefan George
    Stefan George
    Stefan Anton George was a German poet, editor, and translator.-Biography:George was born in Bingen in Germany in 1868. He spent time in Paris, where he was among the writers and artists who attended the Tuesday soireés held by the poet Stéphane Mallarmé. He began to publish poetry in the 1890s,...

     – poet (The New Empire)
  • Hermann Hesse
    Hermann Hesse
    Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...

     – novelist (Siddhartha)
  • Christopher Isherwood
    Christopher Isherwood
    Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...

     – novelist
  • Ernst Jünger
    Ernst Jünger
    Ernst Jünger was a German writer. In addition to his novels and diaries, he is well known for Storm of Steel, an account of his experience during World War I. Some say he was one of Germany's greatest modern writers and a hero of the conservative revolutionary movement following World War I...

     – novelist (The Storm of Steel)
  • Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka
    Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

     – novelist
  • Erich Kästner
    Erich Kästner
    Emil Erich Kästner was a German author, poet, screenwriter and satirist, known for his humorous, socially astute poetry and children's literature.-Dresden 1899–1919:...

     – novelist and poet (Drei Männer im Schnee)
  • Heinrich Mann
    Heinrich Mann
    Luiz Heinrich Mann was a German novelist who wrote works with strong social themes. His attacks on the authoritarian and increasingly militaristic nature of pre-World War II German society led to his exile in 1933.-Life and work:Born in Lübeck as the oldest child of Thomas Johann Heinrich Mann...

     – novelist (Der Untertan)
  • Klaus Mann
    Klaus Mann
    - Life and work :Born in Munich, Klaus Mann was the son of German writer Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia Pringsheim. His father was baptized as a Lutheran, while his mother was from a family of secular Jews. He began writing short stories in 1924 and the following year became drama critic for a...

     – novelist (Mephisto)
  • Thomas Mann
    Thomas Mann
    Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...

     – novelist (Death in Venice)
  • Erich Mühsam
    Erich Mühsam
    Erich Mühsam was a German-Jewish anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic....

     – poet, playwright, anarchist
  • Erich Maria Remarque
    Erich Maria Remarque
    Erich Maria Remarque was a German author, best known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front.-Life and work:...

     – novelist (All Quiet on the Western Front)
  • Anna Seghers
    Anna Seghers
    Anna Seghers was a German writer famous for depicting the moral experience of the Second World War.- Life :...

     – novelist
  • Kurt Tucholsky
    Kurt Tucholsky
    Kurt Tucholsky was a German-Jewish journalist, satirist and writer. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger and Ignaz Wrobel. Born in Berlin-Moabit, he moved to Paris in 1924 and then to Sweden in 1930.Tucholsky was one of the most important journalists of...

     – satirist

Music

  • Alban Berg
    Alban Berg
    Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

     – composer (Wozzeck)
  • Paul Hindemith
    Paul Hindemith
    Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

     – composer, violist (Mathis der Maler)
  • Otto Klemperer
    Otto Klemperer
    Otto Klemperer was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century.-Biography:Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany...

     – conductor and composer
  • Arnold Schoenberg
    Arnold Schoenberg
    Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

     – composer (Transfigured Night)
  • Anton Webern
    Anton Webern
    Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...

     – composer
  • Kurt Weill
    Kurt Weill
    Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

     – composer (The Threepenny Opera)
  • Maxwell Clarke – Tuba Player

Dance

  • Mary Wigman
    Mary Wigman
    Mary Wigman was a German dancer, choreographer, and dance instructor.A pioneer of expressionist dance, her work was hailed for bringing the deepest of existential experiences to the stage...

     - dancer and choreographer
  • Rudolf von Laban - choreographer
  • Kurt Jooss
    Kurt Jooss
    Kurt Jooss was a famous ballet dancer and choreographer mixing classical ballet with theatre; he is also widely regarded as the founder of dance theatre or tanztheater...

     - choreographer

Theater and Film

  • Alfred Abel
    Alfred Abel
    Alfred Abel was a German film actor, director, and producer. He appeared in over 140 silent and sound films between 1913 and 1938...

     – actor
  • Anita Berber
    Anita Berber
    Anita Berber was a German dancer, actress, writer, and prostitute who was the subject of an Otto Dix painting. She lived during the Weimar period.-Early life:...

     – actress
  • Lil Dagover
    Lil Dagover
    Lil Dagover was a German stage, film and television actress whose career spanned nearly six decades.-Early life:...

     – actress
  • Marlene Dietrich
    Marlene Dietrich
    Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...

     – actress
  • Arnold Fanck
    Arnold Fanck
    Arnold Fanck was a pioneer of the German mountain film....

     – director, producer and editor of Mountain film
    Mountain film
    A mountain film is a film genre that focuses on mountaineering and especially the battle of man against nature. In addition to mere adventure, the protagonists who return from the mountain come back changed, usually gaining wisdom and enlightenment....

    s
  • Carl Froelich
    Carl Froelich
    Carl August Froelich was a German film pioneer and film director.-Apparatus builder and cameraman:...

     – director
  • Greta Garbo
    Greta Garbo
    Greta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...

     – actress
  • Käthe Haack
    Käthe Haack
    Käthe Haack was a German actress. She appeared in over 200 films between 1915 and 1980.She was born Käte Lisbeth Minna Sophie Isolde Haack in Berlin, Germany and was previously married to actor Heinrich Schroth, with whom she had a daughter, actress Hannelore Schroth in 1922.-Selected...

     – actress
  • Thea von Harbou
    Thea von Harbou
    Thea Gabriele von Harbou was a German actress, author and film director of Prussian aristocratic origin. She was born in Tauperlitz in the Kingdom of Bavaria.-Early work:...

     – screenwriter, actress
  • Brigitte Helm
    Brigitte Helm
    Brigitte Helm was a German actress, best remembered for her dual role as Maria and her double, the Maschinenmensch, in Fritz Lang's 1927 silent film Metropolis.-Career:...

     – actress
  • Bruno Kastner
    Bruno Kastner
    Bruno Kastner was a German stage and film actor, screenwriter and film producer whose career was most prominent in the 1910s and 1920s during the silent film era...

     – actor
  • Werner Krauss
    Werner Krauss
    Werner Johannes Krauss was a German stage and film actor.-Early life:Krauss was born at the parsonage of Gestungshausen in Upper Franconia, where his grandfather was Protestant pastor. He spent his childhood in Breslau and from 1901 attended the teacher's college at Kreuzburg...

     – actor
  • Fritz Lang
    Fritz Lang
    Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...

     – filmmaker (Metropolis)
  • Ernst Lubitsch
    Ernst Lubitsch
    Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...

     – film director
  • Erika Mann
    Erika Mann
    Erika Julia Hedwig Mann was a German actress and writer, the eldest daughter of novelist Thomas Mann and Katia Mann.-Life:...

     – theatre producer, playwright, journalist, cabaret and film actress.
  • Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
    Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
    Friedrich Wilhelm "F. W." Murnau was one of the most influential German film directors of the silent era, and a prominent figure in the expressionist movement in German cinema during the 1920s...

     – filmmaker (Nosferatu)
  • Pola Negri
    Pola Negri
    Pola Negri was a Polish stage and film actress who achieved worldwide fame for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles from the 1910s through the 1940s during the Golden Era of Hollywood film. She was the first European film star to be invited to Hollywood, and became a great American star. She...

     – actress
  • Erwin Piscator
    Erwin Piscator
    Erwin Friedrich Maximilian Piscator was a German theatre director and producer and, with Bertolt Brecht, the foremost exponent of epic theatre, a form that emphasizes the socio-political content of drama, rather than its emotional manipulation of the audience or on the production's formal...

     – theatre and film producer
  • Erich Pommer
    Erich Pommer
    Erich Pommer was a German-born film producer and executive. He was involved in the German Expressionist film movement during the silent era as the head of production at Decla, Decla-Bioscop and from 1924 to 1926 at Ufa responsible for many of the best known movies of the Weimar Republic such as...

     – film producer
  • Max Reinhardt
    Max Reinhardt (theatre director)
    ----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...

     – theatre producer
  • Lotte Reiniger
    Lotte Reiniger
    Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger was a German silhouette animator and film director.- Early life :Lotte Reiniger was born in Berlin-Charlottenburg, German Empire, on June 2, 1899...

     – pioneering animator
  • Hans Richter
    Hans Richter (artist)
    Hans Richter was a painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, film-experimenter and producer. He was born in Berlin into a well-to-do family and died in Minusio, near Locarno, Switzerland.-Germany:...

     – filmmaker, actor, writer
  • Leni Riefenstahl
    Leni Riefenstahl
    Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens , a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party...

     – dancer, actress, and film director
  • Walther Ruttmann – director (Opus series, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City)
  • Leontine Sagan
    Leontine Sagan
    Leontine Sagan was an Austrian actress and theatre director.Born in Budapest, Sagan trained with Max Reinhardt. The first and most widely known of her two films is Mädchen in Uniform...

     – actress and filmmaker Mädchen in Uniform (1931)
  • Josef von Sternberg
    Josef von Sternberg
    Josef von Sternberg — born Jonas Sternberg — was an Austrian-American film director. He is particularly noted for his distinctive mise en scène, use of lighting and soft lens, and seven-film collaboration with actress Marlene Dietrich.-Youth:Von Sternberg was born Jonas Sternberg to a Jewish...

     – filmmaker The Salvation Hunters (1925), The Blue Angel (1930))
  • Conrad Veidt
    Conrad Veidt
    Conrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Man Who Laughs , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...

     – actor
  • Robert Wiene
    Robert Wiene
    Robert Wiene was an important film director of the German silent cinema.Robert Wiene was born in Breslau, as the elder son of the successful theatre actor Carl Wiene. His younger brother Conrad also became an actor, but Robert Wiene at first studied law at the University of Berlin. In 1908 he also...

     – director (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)

Architecture

  • Peter Behrens
    Peter Behrens
    Peter Behrens was a German architect and designer. He was important for the modernist movement, as several of the movements leading names worked for him when they were young.-Biography:Behrens attended the Christianeum Hamburg from September 1877 until Easter 1882...

     – architect
  • Walter Gropius
    Walter Gropius
    Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....

     – architect, founder of the Bauhaus
    Bauhaus
    ', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

  • Hugo Häring
    Hugo Häring
    Hugo Häring was a German architect and architectural writer best known for his writings on "organic architecture", and as a figure in architectural debates about functionalism in the 1920s and 1930s, though he had an important role as an expressionist architect.A student of the great Theodor...

     – architect
  • Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky
    Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky
    Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky was the first female Austrian architect and an activist in the Nazi resistance movement. She is mostly remembered today for designing the so-called Frankfurt Kitchen.-Training:...

     – the first female architect in Austria and designer of the Frankfurt kitchen
    Frankfurt kitchen
    The Frankfurt kitchen was a milestone in domestic architecture, considered the fore-runner of modern fitted kitchens, for it realised for the first time a kitchen built after a unified concept, designed to enable efficient work and to be built at low cost...

  • Ernst May
    Ernst May
    Ernst May was a German architect and city planner.May successfully applied urban design techniques to the city of Frankfurt am Main during Germany's Weimar period, and in 1930 less successfully exported those ideas to Soviet Union cities, newly created under Stalinist rule...

     – architect
  • Erich Mendelsohn
    Erich Mendelsohn
    Erich Mendelsohn was a Jewish German architect, known for his expressionist architecture in the 1920s, as well as for developing a dynamic functionalism in his projects for department stores and cinemas.-Early life:...

     – architect
  • Adolf Meyer
    Adolf Meyer (architect)
    Adolf Meyer was a German architect. A student and employee of Peter Behrens, Meyer became the office boss of the firm of Walter Gropius around 1915 and a full partner afterwards. In 1919 Gropius appointed Meyer as a master at the Bauhaus, where he taught work drawing and construction technique...

     – architect
  • Hans Poelzig
    Hans Poelzig
    Hans Poelzig was a German architect, painter and set designer.-Life:Poelzig was born in Berlin in 1869 to the countess Clara Henrietta Maria Poelzig while she was married to George Acland Ames, an Englishman...

     – architect
  • Bruno Taut
    Bruno Taut
    Bruno Julius Florian Taut , was a prolific German architect, urban planner and author active during the Weimar period....

     – architect and city planner
  • Mies van der Rohe – architect

Philosophy and Theory

  • Theodor W. Adorno
    Theodor W. Adorno
    Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....

     – critical theorist
  • Walter Benjamin
    Walter Benjamin
    Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist...

     – critical theorist
  • Martin Buber
    Martin Buber
    Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....

     – philosopher (I and Thou)
  • Martin Heidegger
    Martin Heidegger
    Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...

     – philosopher (Being and Time)
  • Max Horkheimer
    Max Horkheimer
    Max Horkheimer was a German-Jewish philosopher-sociologist, famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment...

     – critical theorist
  • Max Weber
    Max Weber
    Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...

     – political theorist

See also

  • Aftermath of World War I
    Aftermath of World War I
    The fighting in World War I ended in western Europe when the Armistice took effect at 11:00 am GMT on November 11, 1918, and in eastern Europe by the early 1920s. During and in the aftermath of the war the political, cultural, and social order was drastically changed in Europe, Asia and Africa,...

  • Cinema of Germany
    Cinema of Germany
    Cinema in Germany can be traced back to the late 19th century. German cinema has made major technical and artistic contributions to film.Unlike any other national cinemas, which developed in the context of relatively continuous and stable political systems, Germany witnesses major changes to its...

  • Critical Theory
    Critical theory
    Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...

  • Culture of Germany
    Culture of Germany
    German culture began long before the rise of Germany as a nation-state and spanned the entire German-speaking world. From its roots, culture in Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular...

  • Dada
    Dada
    Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

  • Degenerate art
    Degenerate art
    Degenerate art is the English translation of the German entartete Kunst, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature, and those identified as degenerate artists were...

  • Expressionism
    Expressionism
    Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

  • Futurism
    Futurism (art)
    Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasized and glorified themes associated with contemporary concepts of the future, including speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane and the industrial city...

  • Germany
    Germany
    Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

  • German Expressionism
    German Expressionism
    German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...

  • Gleichschaltung
    Gleichschaltung
    Gleichschaltung , meaning "coordination", "making the same", "bringing into line", is a Nazi term for the process by which the Nazi regime successively established a system of totalitarian control and tight coordination over all aspects of society. The historian Richard J...

  • Glitter and Doom - Exhibit of Art in the Weimar Rebpulic
    Glitter and Doom
    Glitter and Doom is the name of a Special Exhibit formerly shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring portrait art of Germany from 1919-1933, between the World Wars when the Weimar Republic was in political power. This was shown from November 16, 2006 to February 19, 2007.Life in the Weimar...

  • Glossary of the Weimar Republic
    Glossary of the Weimar Republic
    These are terms, concepts and ideas that are useful to understanding the political situation in the Weimar Republic. Some are particular to the period and government, while others were just in common usage but have a bearing on the Weimar milieu and political maneuvering.*Agrarian Bolshevism...

  • History of Germany
    History of Germany
    The concept of Germany as a distinct region in central Europe can be traced to Roman commander Julius Caesar, who referred to the unconquered area east of the Rhine as Germania, thus distinguishing it from Gaul , which he had conquered. The victory of the Germanic tribes in the Battle of the...

  • Kultur
  • Literature of World War I
    Literature of World War I
    Many authors have depicted World War I in literature. During the war itself, it has been estimated that thousands of poems were written every day by combatants and their relatives....

  • Lost Generation
    Lost Generation
    The "Lost Generation" is a term used to refer to the generation, actually a cohort, that came of age during World War I. The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, The Sun Also Rises. In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to...

  • Modernism
    Modernism
    Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...

  • Nazi Germany
    Nazi Germany
    Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

  • New Objectivity
    New Objectivity
    The New Objectivity is a term used to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it...

  • Post-WWI recession
    Post-WWI recession
    The post–World War I recession was an economic recession that hit much of the world in the aftermath of World War I.In many nations, especially in North America, this growth continued during the war as nations mobilized their economies to fight the war in Europe. After the war ended, however, the...

  • Post-expressionism
    Post-expressionism
    Post-expressionism is a term coined by the German art critic Franz Roh to describe a variety of movements in the post-war art world which were influenced by expressionism but defined themselves through rejecting its aesthetic...

  • Roaring Twenties
    Roaring Twenties
    The Roaring Twenties is a phrase used to describe the 1920s, principally in North America, but also in London, Berlin and Paris for a period of sustained economic prosperity. The phrase was meant to emphasize the period's social, artistic, and cultural dynamism...

  • Surrealism
    Surrealism
    Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

  • Weimar Timeline
    Weimar Timeline
    This Weimar Timeline charts the chronology of the Weimar Republic, dating the pre-history before the adoption of the actual Weimar constitution. This timeline stops when Hitler establishes the Third Reich.The timeline is color-coded:...

  • Weimaraner
    Weimaraner
    The Weimaraner is a dog that was originally bred for hunting in the early 19th century. Early Weimaraners were used by royalty for hunting large game such as boar, bear, and deer. As the popularity of large game hunting began to decline, Weimaraners were used for hunting smaller animals like...

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