Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg
The Weimar Republic Sourcebook
$45.00, £30.95 paperback
9780520067752
Available Now
A laboratory for competing visions of modernity, the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) continues to haunt the imagination of the twentieth century. Its political and cultural lessons retain uncanny relevance for all who seek to understand the tensions and possibilities of our age. The Weimar Republic Sourcebook represents the most comprehensive documentation of Weimar culture, history, and politics assembled in any language. It invites a wide community of readers to discover the richness and complexity of the turbulent years in Germany before Hitler's rise to power.
Drawing from such primary sources as magazines, newspapers, manifestoes, and official documents (many unknown even to specialists and most never before available in English), this book challenges the traditional boundaries between politics, culture, and social life. Its thirty chapters explore Germany's complex relationship to democracy, ideologies of "reactionary modernism," the rise of the "New Woman," Bauhaus architecture, the impact of mass media, the literary life, the tradition of cabaret and urban entertainment, and the situation of Jews, intellectuals, and workers before and during the emergence of fascism.
While devoting much attention to the Republic's varied artistic and intellectual achievements (the Frankfurt School, political theater, twelve-tone music, cultural criticism, photomontage, and urban planning), the book is unique for its inclusion of many lesser-known materials on popular culture, consumerism, body culture, drugs, criminality, and sexuality; it also contains a timetable of major political events, an extensive bibliography, and capsule biographies. This will be a major resource and reference work for students and scholars in history; art; architecture; literature; social and political thought; and cultural, film, German, and women's studies.
Drawing from such primary sources as magazines, newspapers, manifestoes, and official documents (many unknown even to specialists and most never before available in English), this book challenges the traditional boundaries between politics, culture, and social life. Its thirty chapters explore Germany's complex relationship to democracy, ideologies of "reactionary modernism," the rise of the "New Woman," Bauhaus architecture, the impact of mass media, the literary life, the tradition of cabaret and urban entertainment, and the situation of Jews, intellectuals, and workers before and during the emergence of fascism.
While devoting much attention to the Republic's varied artistic and intellectual achievements (the Frankfurt School, political theater, twelve-tone music, cultural criticism, photomontage, and urban planning), the book is unique for its inclusion of many lesser-known materials on popular culture, consumerism, body culture, drugs, criminality, and sexuality; it also contains a timetable of major political events, an extensive bibliography, and capsule biographies. This will be a major resource and reference work for students and scholars in history; art; architecture; literature; social and political thought; and cultural, film, German, and women's studies.
"A mosaic panorama. . . . Interweaving classic texts with a wealth of excavated matter, [the editors] have done a great service to anyone interested in what modernism was and, through reinterpretation, may yet become."—Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle Review
"A richly diverse collection of writings from prominent social critics, intellectuals, and writers of the period, from Hannah Arendt to Hitler and Kurt Weill."—Library Journal
"The Weimar Republic Sourcebook will almost certainly transform the way the intellectual legacy of the Weimar Republic is thought about and taught in the English-speaking world. . . . Marvelous. . . Scholars of modernity will remain indebted to the enormous intelligence and diligence of the editors, and will have much to learn from the vast array of fascinating materials they have assembled. . . We should be seeing it on every modernist and German Studies reading list for the next thirty to fifty years."—Modernism
"An ambitious compilation of documents (most translated for the first time) that seeks to show the era in all its diversity. . . . The scope and variety are stunning. . . . This sourcebook is a monumental tome, beautifully produced. . . . A welcome and valuable contribution to understanding a complex era that continues to haunt and inspire our own."—Kurt Weill Newsletter
"Unquestionably, The Weimar Republic Sourcebook is a wonderful resource."—H-German Review
"A richly diverse collection of writings from prominent social critics, intellectuals, and writers of the period, from Hannah Arendt to Hitler and Kurt Weill."—Library Journal
"The Weimar Republic Sourcebook will almost certainly transform the way the intellectual legacy of the Weimar Republic is thought about and taught in the English-speaking world. . . . Marvelous. . . Scholars of modernity will remain indebted to the enormous intelligence and diligence of the editors, and will have much to learn from the vast array of fascinating materials they have assembled. . . We should be seeing it on every modernist and German Studies reading list for the next thirty to fifty years."—Modernism
"An ambitious compilation of documents (most translated for the first time) that seeks to show the era in all its diversity. . . . The scope and variety are stunning. . . . This sourcebook is a monumental tome, beautifully produced. . . . A welcome and valuable contribution to understanding a complex era that continues to haunt and inspire our own."—Kurt Weill Newsletter
"Unquestionably, The Weimar Republic Sourcebook is a wonderful resource."—H-German Review
"The Weimar Republic Sourcebook is an invaluable resource for understanding one of the most important and resonant eras of the twentieth century. Since the Weimar debate has continued to repeat itself, albeit with less intellectual brilliance, this book is as much about the present as about the past. Here is the Weimar era in all its many-voiced and eloquent complexity: most of these texts, even those by the most famous names of the period, appear for the first time in English. This is an indispensable, enthralling, properly ambitious book."—Susan Sontag
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