Dr Graham Bartram    

Germ 205 The Weimar Republic: Culture and Society in Germany 1918-1933

Course Home | Schedule | Course Material | Assessments | Course Links

Syllabus

COURSE OUTLINE

WEEK

1 Lectures: INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

 

These opening lectures introduce a number of basic themes — e.g. the clash between tradition and modernity in the Weimar years; the impact of the USA on German society and culture, especially in the mid-1920s; and the three successive ‘phases’ of the Weimar Republic. These are themes that we will find cropping up time and again as the course progresses, creating a growing number of links between the separate topics.

 

 

2 SOCIETY, ECONOMY, POLITICS AND CULTURE 1918-1933

 

Lecture 1: POLITICAL PARTIES AND SOCIAL GROUPS

This lecture prepares the ground for the seminars in Week 3: What were the strengths and weaknesses of this new democracy? Why did it collapse in 1933? We will look at some of the main political parties of the 1920s, and who supported them.

SET TEXT: Ebehard Kolb, The Weimar Republic. ALSO RECOMMENDED: Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic; Ian Kershaw (ed.), Weimar: Why did German Democracy Fail?

 

Lecture 2: PHASES OF WEIMAR HISTORY

This lecture also leads into the seminars next week, by raising the question: Was the Republic doomed from the start?

 

3 SEMINARS: Strengths and weaknesses of the Republic; its support among different social groups; why did it collapse?

(Ian Kershaw’s book is a useful prompt for discussions.)

 

4 Lectures: BRECHT’S POETRY IN THE 1920s

Brecht’s reputation was originally founded on his work as a political playwright, but he was also a major poet. His writings captured the mood of a cynical young generation, but also reflected his growing commitment to the communist (and thus anti-Nazi) cause in the late 1920s.

SET TEXT: Bertolt Brecht, Gedichte. There will also be xeroxes of other poems.

 

5 SEMINARS: Brecht’s nature poetry and love poetry

Brecht’s city poetry

 

6 SEMINARS: Brecht’s political poetry

 

 

7 LECTURES (with slides): THE BAUHAUS

Founded in Weimar in 1919, the Bauhaus was a revolutionary school of art and design that sought to reconcile individual creativity and mass production. The conflicts within the Bauhaus, and the hostility it encountered from traditionalists in Weimar society, made it made it a focus of some of the major cultural battles of the 1920s.

There is no SET TEXT, but Frank Whitford’s The Bauhaus is highly recommended.

 

 

8 SEMINARS on the BAUHAUS

We will be looking at Bauhaus manifestos, but there is also the opportunity for individual or team presentations on particular members of the Bauhaus.

 

9 WAR LITERATURE

LECTURE

The First World War (or ‘Great War’ as it was then known) mobilised European societies to inflict mass carnage on each other.

It was an experience that profoundly marked the minds of those who went through it and survived. In Germany, the trauma was compounded and complicated by the humiliation of defeat. War novels and war diaries, swelling to a flood by the late 1920s, not only depicted the experience of trench warfare, but often bore a political message. We will be looking at two writers with starkly contrasting views (though also some points of contact): E. M. Remarque, whose bestseller Im Westen nichts Neues adopted a pacifist stance; and Ernst Jünger, whose war diaries (from which we will use a xeroxed extract) preached an aggressive nationalism.

SET TEXT (in campus bookshop): E. M. Remarque, Im Westen nichts Neues

Xerox: Extract from Ernst Jünger, Feuer und Blut

SEMINAR: IM WESTEN NICHTS NEUES

(some key scenes)

 

10 SEMINAR: IM WESTEN NICHTS NEUES

(style and structure of the novel)

 

SEMINAR: FEUER UND BLUT

(language, imagery, ideology)

GB October 2004

Course Home | Schedule | Course Material | Assessments | Course Links