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This chapter examines why the long-run appeal of jazz music worldwide was related to the city of origin's network position with the exception of Berlin in what was then Weimar Germany. Between 1923 and 1933, Berlin produced more early jazz than any other city in Europe as the center of Weimar culture. And yet the lasting appeal of jazz music recorded in Berlin was notably less than that of other European cities. To explain this puzzle, the chapter develops a sequential relational model for understanding the fate of German jazz in which the locations of musical reception and production correspond to schemas that affect the tastes and the ways in which cultural objects are interpreted. The example of German jazz suggests that the model of sociological congruence works best when the musical identity of a location is not so strong that its actual output is overwhelmed by the perceived output from a location.

This chapter examines the place of hypnosis in Weimar Germany's cultural imaginary and its connection to a broad set of fears articulated around the “masses,” “mass culture,” and the problem of “mass psychology.” It relates this motif to debates about Weimar cinema, which aroused both intense apprehension concerning its impact on audiences and equally intense hopes concerning its possibilities as a medium of public instruction or enlightenment. In particular, it looks at Fritz Lang's film The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, which was banned in 1933 by Germany's film censor board due to fear that it represented an incitement not merely to crime but to revolution and terror. The chapter shows that Testament both casts a hypnotic spell and undoes it through a kind of “counterhypnosis.” It also discusses some of the questions raised by the banning of Testament, including one relating to the role of the mass media in modern public life.

Yvonne Hardt links the era of early German modern dance called Ausdruckstanz (expressive dance) and the workers’ culture movement in the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s. Both were influenced by the life reform movement (Lebensreformbewegung), which envisioned that a different society could be achieved by a new body culture (Körperkultur). Whereas Ausdruckstanz has most frequently been discussed in terms of how it could empower women, it also, theoretically, offered men the chance to “rediscover” themselves in ways that could emancipate them from traditional gender roles. At the same time, early modern dance could also reflect ideals of the Socialist and Communist ideology, which reinscribed some old male‐female divisions by emphasizing the physical strength of the male worker. Thematic aspects in the work of the following prominent Weimar dance figures are considered: Rudolf Laban, Martin Gleisner, and Jean (Hans) Weidt. Implicit in Hardt's analysis is the difficulty of embodying political ideals in dance in a way that acknowledges the multiple strands of complex gender identities.

This chapter argues that the Hindenburg myth was as much a cultural as it was a political phenomenon, and did not just occupy those engaged in German politics, but penetrated much broader sections of society in its myriad forms: a massive readership of Hindenburg books and special issues of the illustrated press existed, as did a receptive audience for Hindenburg films and his frequent speeches on the radio. Equally, consumers' purchase decisions were animated by the use of his iconic image in commercial advertising. The author shows that Hindenburg's omnipresence in these modern mass media broadened his appeal considerably and led his myth to escape the strict political dividing lines characteristic of Weimar Germany. This points to considerable common symbolic ground beyond political fault-lines. The chapter also highlights Hindenburg's considerable involvement in promoting, managing, and censoring his own myth from the top down.

This chapter traces the millennial dimensions of Hitler's career and his attempt to inaugurate the Tausendjähriges Reich. It shows how Hitler inserted himself into earlier German messianic traditions around a Führer who would save the German people in a time of total catastrophe;how he linked them to the racist, millennial ideology of the Ariosophists; and how, once in power, he exploited modern technology to create a mass movement that swept up a nation in millennial enthusiasm (Nüremberg Rallies). Hitler's genocidal anti-Semitism appears as a form of hard zero-sum millennial competition between two “chosen people.”

This chapter examines the outposts and activities of Soviet cultural diplomacy in Western countries in the 1920s. It argues that Weimar Germany became the most important testing ground for the Soviet dilemma of choosing between ideological sympathizers and influential yet politically distant “bourgeois” partners. It provides a comparative history of the German Society of Friends of the New Russia and other cultural friendship societies created by VOKS after 1923 in Central and Western Europe and the United States. Finally, it examines the international travel of Soviet intellectuals and the role of the Soviet intelligentsia in cultural exchange, probing the patronage relations between Soviet agencies and intellectuals at home and abroad.

This introductory chapter describes the traumatic consequences of the Ruhr Crisis for the region's people. It argues that these events, in which Germany and the Germans appear as victims, have been largely neglected by historians since they fit uncomfortably within an essentially negative and pessimistic understanding of 19th- and earlier 20th-century German history. However, the Ruhr Crisis is best understood as a popular struggle rooted in the republican values of Weimar Germany, conducted at an ultimately devastating price to the ordinary people of the Ruhr and to the wider post-1918 revolutionary settlement. All in all the character of post-1918 Franco–German relations and of early Weimar Germany assume a form contrary to received wisdom.

The introduction outlines the core focus of the book, the Kolonialdeutsche (Colonial Germans): officials and settlers who had invested substantial time and money in German imperialism. The book will examine the difficulties this diverse group of men and women encountered adjusting to their new circumstances, in Weimar Germany or in the new mandates, as they situated their notions of group identity between colonizers and colonial subjects in a world of empires that were not their own. The introduction outlines the temporal scope of the book, starting with the Treaty of Versailles and ending the in-depth analysis in 1933. The epilogue looks into the Nazi era and beyond. The author highlights the importance of Colonial German involvement in such diplomatic flashpoints as the Naturalization Controversy in South African-administered Southwest Africa, and German participation in the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) from 1927 to 1933, and the participation of one of Germany’s former colonial governors in the League of Nations’ commission sent to assess the Manchurian Crisis between China and Japan. The introduction also illustrates the contributions this book makes: revising standard historical portrayals of the League of Nations’ form of international governance, German participation in the League, the role of interest groups in international diplomacy, and liberal imperialism. In analyzing Colonial German investment and participation in interwar internationalism, the book also challenges the idea of a direct continuity between Germany’s colonial period and the Nazi era.

The Introduction analyzes both how the popular appeal of the Nazi and Communist parties posed a dilemma for Weimar democracy and how Schmitt thought this dilemma illustrated the broader problem mass democracy posed for twentieth-century constitutional democratic states. The dilemma begged the question of whether the will of the people could be legitimately constrained. The Introduction contextualizes Schmitt’s analysis of this dilemma by reconstructing nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debates in German jurisprudence about the nature of valid law, arguing that Schmitt’s thought emerged out of an anti-positivist movement. This Introduction also assesses some of the problems facing scholarship of Schmitt, including his occasionalism and anti-Semitism. While acknowledging how damning these charges are, it argues that Schmitt’s state and constitutional theory can be separated from his personal failures and that his thought provides a valuable and original solution to the problems modern mass democracy poses.

The theme of historical transformations of legal rationality can be further developed through an examination of the changing social foundations of the idea of the Rule of Law, illuminated by Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer. Neumann's view that the Rule of Law reconciles, in specific historical conditions, the contradictory elements of law as sovereign power or will (voluntas)and as reason or principle (ratio) is important to the arguments in Part III of this book. The idea of the Rule of Law recognises centralised political power as the immediate origin of modern law while emphasising certain values that may be asserted against government. But what does that formulation entail in contemporary conditions? Historical evidence suggests why an appropriate reconciliation of ratio and voluntas may be hard to maintain. This chapter discusses the legal invisibility of change, the Rule of Law of competitive society, the ‘England problem’ and the Rule of Law, and the experience of Weimar Germany.

This book examines the “problem” of fear in its intellectual, social, and political incarnations. It situates fear in world-historical terms, thus breaking new ground in the historical and cultural analysis of emotions. Each contributor is specifically concerned with a discrete historical moment, thereby emphasizing the variability and contingency of fears past, present, and future. Examples of such moments are the experience of fear among eighteenth-century rebels, priests, and colonial administrators in Peru; the universal fear response evoked by the Thirty Years War; and the technologically mediated experiences of anxiety and fear collectively felt by cinemagoers in Weimar Germany. This introduction discusses some of the lineaments of the history and philosophy of emotion as it pertains to the problem of fear, highlighting counterpoints or analogues to fear such as comfort, assurance, and hope.

Gret Palucca quickly ascended to dance stardom in the 1920s. Born in 1902, Palucca received her dance training at Mary Wigman's pioneering Dresden studio in the early 1920s and was among the first generation of Wigman students to go on to innovate in the world of dance. During her career ascent, Palucca positioned herself in close proximity to visual artists, and she especially touted her relationship with artists at the Bauhaus, the innovative school for art and design in Weimar Germany. This chapter examines the visual images of Palucca created by students and teachers at the Bauhaus. In so doing, it challenges the standard literature that associates Bauhaus dance exclusively with dance choreographer Oskar Schlemmer.

This chapter follows Ley during his early twenties, when he became an intermediary between specialized experts and the general public. Ley constructed his persona as a freelance writer and journalist, who could translate complex concepts for a broader audience in Weimar Germany. This chapter explores Ley’s entrance into rocketry clubs, amateur science, and circles of journalists during Weimar’s rocketry fad. It concludes with an analysis of his role in the ground breaking science fiction film, Woman in the Moon (1929).