Mastodawn

The #KappPutsch began on #ThisDayInHistory in 1920. For five days the new #WeimarRepublic, founded after the #GermanRevolution, was chased from Berlin. But the gov's call to #GeneralStrike & refusal of bureaucrats to back the coup doomed it. Amnesty for putschists was a mistake.

Jonathan Emmesedi Mar 7

I've just been writing about "Vertigo: The Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany" by Harald Jähnner.

One author discussed there is Helmuth Plessner, with a focus on his 1924 "Grenzen der Gemeinschaft" (Limits of Community).

Katja Haustein wrote about Plessner in a TLS review (24/4/20) of his "Political Anthropology":

>>In Political Anthropology (Macht und menschliche Natur), written in 1931, Plessner discusses the anthropological origins of the human tendency to give in to authoritarian forms of government. Closely linked to his earlier and more accessible essay, The Limits of Community (1924), the book reads as a passionate warning against the rise of social and political radicalism that so exhausted the Weimar Republic. Much of Plessner's argument is based on what Richard Sennett has called the "tyrannies of intimacy". Plessner claimed that the central problem of modern subjectivity was not a growing distance between individuals, but, on the contrary, its disappearance. He curbed widespread expectations that promote politicized conceptions of community (Gemeinschaft) as a space in which alienation would dissolve. He attacked the idealization of a "seamless togetherness" tainted by nationalist colours, and defended the idea of society (Gesellschaft) as a space in which distance affords man his dignity. <<

I've got to read some Plessner!

Image: Wikipedia

#HelmuthPlessner #Philosophy #SocialTheory #Germany #WeimarRepublic

Jonathan Emmesedi Mar 7

I've recently read "Vertigo: The Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany" by Harald Jähner.

Specialists with a good knowledge of the political history of interwar Germany will probably agree with the criticisms of leading historian Richard Evans in his 29/11/ 24 TLS review, in which he notes the failure of the book to address important aspects of the republic's politics such as the nature of the constitution.

Evans goes on to criticise "Vertigo" as being overly focused on Berlin and its culture of modernity and its neglect of rural and small town Germany.

For a cultural history, though, this emphasis on Berlin is justified, because that metropolis was offering novel aspirations, norms, and ways of living for the country as a whole, even if the reaction to that agenda in much of rural Germany was one of suspicion, resentment, and finally hatred. One rural commentator Jähner quotes noted with bitterness the exodus of women to the city, "the mass grave of the German people", attracted as they were by "greed, by pleasure seeking, by hollow noise in every area of life, by noisy oriental Jewish nonsense in state politics, department stores and theatres."

I would guess that the these seductive possibilities were made known throughout the German speaking world by the mostly Berlin based media of cinema and the illustrated press. Even if the overwhelming majority of Germans neither actively participated in the new forms of art and entertainment flowering in Berlin nor experimented with new metropolitan practices and presentations in sex and gender, the very existence of this new culture could not do other than transform cultures beyond the metropolis, even if only by introducing within them a self-conscious note of antiurban antimodernity.

Jähner, a journalist, has a good feel for both aspects of everyday life that might pass unnoticed by too many historians, such as the yoyo craze of 1932, and also for the disparate and sometimes internally contradictory emotions, moods, and feelings underlying the republic's culture.

Although "Vertigo" is neither comprehensive nor unquestionable in its treatment of Weimar Germany , it is a rich and thoroughly readable resource for non-Germanists like me, and notable for its determination to treat the culture of the republic as worthy of examination and perhaps celebration in its own right, as opposed to being merely an interlude leading to the advent of the Third Reich.

#Books #History #Germany #WeimarRepublic #Vertigo #20thCentury #InterwarHistory #Modernity #HaraldJähner #CulturalHistory

Valdeloire Feb 27

Пожежа в Рейхстазі
https://buymeacoffee.com/valdeloir/tebekacovi

#ПожежаВРейхстазі #Берлін1933 #ІсторіяНімеччини #ВеймарськаРеспубліка #ПрихідНацистів
#ReichstagFire #Berlin1933 #GermanHistory #WeimarRepublic #RiseOfNazism

Jonathan Emmesedi Feb 22

George Grosz -- Pillars Of Society -- Oil on canvas -- 1926 -- Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie

I'm probably in the company of many here in being familiar with this pictorial indictment of the capitalist Germany of the mid twenties.

I can't make up my mind whether the unforgettable imagery is or was politically effective as a powerful agent and sustainer of radicalization, or whether, on the other hand, it is or was so overwhelmingly and indiscriminately polemical as to leave viewers in a state of general disgust about their society and ultimately in a state of demobilising despair about the possibility of change for the better.

#Art #Painting #PoliticalArt
#GeorgeGrosz #GermanArt #20thCenturyArt #NeueSachlichkeit
#WeimarRepublic

Jonathan Emmesedi Feb 22

Christian Schad -- Two Girls -- 1928 -- Oil on Canvas -- Private Collection

Another picture from the 2006 exhibition catalogue "Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s" that struck me was Christian Schad's 1928 "Two Girls".

The catalogue entry claims that the picture would "descend into gross pornography" were the figure in the foreground to be shown looking at the viewer.

Rather than enter into a moralistic and unproductive discussion of this claim, I would rather consider whether the picture shows a couple's intimacy or the self- absorption of two isolated individuals.

#Art #Painting #Portrait
#ChristianSchad #GermanArt #20thCenturyArt #NeueSachlichkeit
#Verism #Gay #Homosexual #Lesbian
#Masturbation #Pornography #WeimarRepublic

Jonathan Emmesedi Feb 22

The Jeweller Karl Krall -- Otto Dix -- 1923 -- Oil on canvas -- Kunst und Museumsverien im Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal.

According to the 2006 exhibition catalogue "Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s", Krall was not only, as a chamber music amateur, musical, but was also "musical", to use the term used in 1920s British English to describe gay men.

The catalogue entry suggests that beneath Krall's jacket, "there must be a corset that is much too tight. Severe discomfort makes the blood rush to Krall's face, turning it purple-red with bluish accents. Veins on his forehead seem ready to pop."

As with so many of the other portraits, I find myself fascinated by this picture. Is Dix's depiction of the hour glass figured jeweller a frank depiction of Krall's style in foundation garments, or does it function as the painter's possibly contemptuous verdict on male homosexuality?

#Art #Painting #Portrait #OttoDix #GermanArt #20thCenturyArt #NeueSachlichkeit #KarlKrall #Gay #Homosexual #Homophobia #Corset #TightWaisting #WeimarRepublic