Culture in Weimar Germany

1919-1933

Though Germany was still delicately balanced politically and economically, the Stresseman

years of the 1920s included a major flowering of the arts and science in the republic, leading

to Berlin becoming the cultural centre of Europe at the time.

Architecture

• The establishment of the Bauhaus school of design by Walter Gropius

• Became leading centre for art and design but was closed by the Nazis in 1933 because of its radical approaches to teaching and research

• Major figures left Germany to live in the USA and the current state of Israel, where many buildings follow the Bauhaus style Source: www.lepoix.de

Art

• The growth of the modernist movement, particularly expressionism and abstract expressionism

• Major figures were Paul Klee, Otto Dix, Wassily Kandinsky, Max Beckmann

• Left: Inneres Kochen (Inner Simmering), 1925 by W. Kandinsky (www.distributed-objects.com/book/cover.html)

Literature

• Writers such as Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Erich Remarque became world famous

• Bertolt Brecht won the Nobel prize for literature

• “THERE are some marriages, and not even an imagination fed up on novels can explain how they came about. They must simply be accepted, the way we accept a juxtaposition of opposing qualities on the stage, such as old-and-stupid over against beautiful-and-full-of-life -- which are presupposed, taken for granted as the basis for erecting a farce with the proper mathematics.”

• Translated excerpt from Loulou by Thomas Mann

• Source: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/

Theatre and cinema

• Provocative and socialist theatre and cabaret flourished, creating a strong entertainment industry

• Berlin became a world leader in cinema, with directors such as fritz Lang and Ernst Lubitsch making more films as a single country that the rest of Europe combined.

• Right: Promotional poster for the1922 film Nosferatu, directed by Murnau

Science

• Germany had the post educated population in Europe, and this was reflected in the several Nobel prizes won by Germans in the period by several prominent international scientists including Albert Einstein

• The motor industry flourished, also the development of the zeppelin and advancements in communication occurred

• Right: the Graf zeppelin, the first airship to fly around the world (Source:images.encarta.msn.com)