The German Left and the Weimar Republic

The German Left and the Weimar Republic PDF Author: Ben Fowkes
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004271082
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
The German Left and the Weimar Republic illuminates the history of the political left by presenting a wide range of documents on various aspects of socialist and communist activity in Germany. Separate chapters deal with the policy of Social Democracy in and out of government, the attempts of the Communist Party to overthrow the Weimar Republic, and then later to oppose it. Later chapters move away from the political scene to treat the attitudes of the parties to key social issues, in particular questions of gender and sexuality. The book concludes with a presentation of documents on various groups of socialist and communist dissidents. Many of the documents are made accessible for the first time, and each chapter begins with an original introduction indicating the current state of research.

The German Left and the Weimar Republic

The German Left and the Weimar Republic PDF Author: Ben Fowkes
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004271082
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
The German Left and the Weimar Republic illuminates the history of the political left by presenting a wide range of documents on various aspects of socialist and communist activity in Germany. Separate chapters deal with the policy of Social Democracy in and out of government, the attempts of the Communist Party to overthrow the Weimar Republic, and then later to oppose it. Later chapters move away from the political scene to treat the attitudes of the parties to key social issues, in particular questions of gender and sexuality. The book concludes with a presentation of documents on various groups of socialist and communist dissidents. Many of the documents are made accessible for the first time, and each chapter begins with an original introduction indicating the current state of research.

Film and the German Left in the Weimar Republic

Film and the German Left in the Weimar Republic PDF Author: Bruce Murray
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292788037
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
The Weimar Republic of Germany, covering the post-World War I period of civil and governmental strife, witnessed a great struggle among a variety of ideologies, a struggle for which the arts provided one important arena. Leftist individuals and organizations critiqued mainstream art production and attempted to counter what they perceived as its conservative-to-reactionary influence on public opinion. In this groundbreaking study, Bruce Murray focuses on the leftist counter-current in Weimar cinema, offering an alternative critical approach to the traditional one of close readings of the classical films. Beginning with a brief review of pre-Weimar cinema (1896-1918), he analyzes the film activity of the Social Democratic Party, the German Communists, and independent leftists in the Weimar era. Leftist filmmakers, journalists, and commentators, who in many cases contributed significantly to marginal leftist as well as mainstream cinema, have, until now, received little scholarly attention. Drawing on exhaustive archival research and personal interviews, Murray shows how the plurality of aesthetic models represented in the work of individuals who participated in leftist experiments with cinema in the 1920S collapsed as Germany underwent the transition from parliamentary democracy to fascist dictatorship. He suggests that leftists shared responsibility for that collapse and asserts the value of such insights for those who contemplate alternatives to institutional forms of cinematic discourse today.

Weimar Germany's Left-Wing Intellectuals

Weimar Germany's Left-Wing Intellectuals PDF Author: Istvan Deak
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520310284
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
The Germany between the two world wars, which produced some of the greatest literary lights of the century, also produced a forum worthy of them: the brilliantly edited, crusading, lef-oriented (but not party-affiliated) Weltbühne. The present book tells the history of this weekly Berlin journal, discusses the men that ran it and wrote it, and outlines the causes for which it fought. The Weltbühne had three editors--the uncompromising style-conscious Siegfried Jacobsohn, the sharp-tongued, satirical Kurt Tucholsky, and the enigmatic, aristocratic Carl von Ossietzky, martyred by the Nazis. The radical, intellectual elite of Germany (and to come extent outside Germany) contributed to the journal -- Heinrich Mann, Alfred Polgar, Erich Kästner, Alfred Doblin, Bertolt Brecht, Leonhard Frank, Theodor Plievier, Rene Schickele, Lion Feuchtwanger, Ernst Toller, Arnold Zweig; also Arthur Koestler, Romain Rolland, Henry Barbusse, and Leon Trotsky. These men stood for the demilitarization of Germany, the purge of the reactionary administration and judiciary, the end of all restraints on human rights (including the restraints on abortion and homosexuality), complete equality of women, pacifist educational policies, the intellectualization of politics and politicization of the intellectuals, unity of the working-class parties, and socialism. When, on May 11, 1933, on Opera Square in Berlin, the stormtroopers burned books of fifteen authors sinning against the German Volk, thirteen of them had made contribution to the Weltbühne; and since many of them were Jews, the auto-da-fé gave special pleasure to the mob. Mr. Deak recreates with unusual empathy the atmosphere of the era, characterized by terrific social and political issues, which eventually lead to the disaster of the Thirties. The campaigns of the Weltbühne failed, and the contributors were killed or went into exile, with the journal itself moving from Berlin to Vienna to Prague to Paris before it died. Mr. Deak makes a lasting contribution to history by opening to a broader public the records preserved in the pages of this important but largely ignored journal, by selecting and interpreting the issues, and by brining to life the personalities that gave the era its intellectual profile. And understanding of the Weltbühne campaigns is indispensable for an appraisal of Central European politics in the first half of our century. Mr. Deak, in this readable book written with the passionate interest of a person who seems to have been a participant rather than a chronicler, makes this understanding possible by a lucid exposition and a searching analysis of the events. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1968.

Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution

Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution PDF Author: Ralf Hoffrogge
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004280065
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 269

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Book Description
Richard Müller, a leading figure of the German Revolution in 1918, is unknown today. As the operator and unionist who represented Berlin’s metalworkers, he was main organiser of the ‘Revolutionary Stewards’, a clandestine network that organised a series of mass strikes between 1916 and 1918. With strong support in the factories, the Revolutionary Stewards were the driving force of the Revolution. By telling Müller's story, this study gives a very different account of the revolutionary birth of the Weimar Republic. Using new archival sources and abandoning the traditional focus on the history of political parties, Ralf Hoffrogge zooms in on working class politics on the shop floor and its contribution to social change. First published in German by Karl Dietz Verlag as Richard Müller - Der Mann hinter der November Revolution, Berlin, 2008, this english edition was completerly revised for the english speaking audience and contains new sources and recent literature.

The Death of Democracy

The Death of Democracy PDF Author: Benjamin Carter Hett
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1250162513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A riveting account of how the Nazi Party came to power and how the failures of the Weimar Republic and the shortsightedness of German politicians allowed it to happen. Why did democracy fall apart so quickly and completely in Germany in the 1930s? How did a democratic government allow Adolf Hitler to seize power? In The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett answers these questions, and the story he tells has disturbing resonances for our own time. To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. He would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship. Benjamin Carter Hett is a leading scholar of twentieth-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of these feckless politicians show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it. He offers a powerful lesson for today, when democracy once again finds itself embattled and the siren song of strongmen sounds ever louder.

Weimar Radicals

Weimar Radicals PDF Author: Timothy Scott Brown
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1845459083
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Exploring the gray zone of infiltration and subversion in which the Nazi and Communist parties sought to influence and undermine each other, this book offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between two defining ideologies of the twentieth century. The struggle between Fascism and Communism is situated within a broader conversation among right- and left-wing publicists, across the Youth Movement and in the “National Bolshevik” scene, thus revealing the existence of a discourse on revolutionary legitimacy fought according to a set of common assumptions about the qualities of the ideal revolutionary. Highlighting the importance of a masculine-militarist politics of youth revolt operative in both Marxist and anti-Marxist guises, Weimar Radicals forces us to re-think the fateful relationship between the two great ideological competitors of the Weimar Republic, while offering a challenging new interpretation of the distinctive radicalism of the interwar era.

A Jewish Communist in Weimar Germany

A Jewish Communist in Weimar Germany PDF Author: Ralf Hoffrogge
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004337261
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 654

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Book Description
Walter Benjamin derided Werner Scholem as a ‘rogue’ in 1924. Josef Stalin referred him as a ‘splendid man’, but soon backtracked and labeled him an ‘imbecile’, while Ernst Thälmann, chairman of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), warned his followers against the dangers of ‘Scholemism’. For the philosopher and historian Gershom Scholem, however, Werner was first and foremost his older brother. The life of German-Jewish Communist Werner Scholem (1895–1940) had many facets. Werner and Gerhard, later Gershom, rebelled together against their authoritarian father and the atmosphere of national chauvinism engulfing Germany during World War I. After inspiring his younger brother to take up the Zionist cause, Werner himself underwent a long personal journey before deciding to join the Communist struggle. Scholem climbed the party ladder and orchestrated the KPD's ‘Bolshevisation’ campaign, only to be expelled as one of Stalin's opponents in 1926. He was arrested in 1933, and ultimately murdered in the Buchenwald concentration camp seven years later. This first biography of Werner Scholem tells his life story by drawing on a wide range of original sources and archive material long hidden beyond the Iron Curtain of the Cold War era. First published in German by UVK Verlagsgesellschaft as Werner Scholem - eine politische Biographie (1895-1940), Konstanz, 2014.

Weimar Germany

Weimar Germany PDF Author: Eric D. Weitz
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691183058
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
"Weimar Centennial edition with a new preface by the author."--Title page.

Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918-1933

Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918-1933 PDF Author: Norman Laporte
Publisher: Studies in Twentieth Century C
ISBN: 9781910448984
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
25 years after the archives were opened in Berlin and Moscow, the German Communist Party is the subject of new studies. This book makes this scholarship available in English for the first time.

The Gravediggers

The Gravediggers PDF Author: Hauke Friederichs
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1782834591
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
November 1932. With the German economy in ruins and street battles raging between political factions, the Weimar Republic is in its death throes. Its elderly president Paul von Hindenburg floats above the fray, inscrutably haunting the halls of the Reichstag. In the shadows, would-be saviours of the nation vie for control. The great rivals are the chancellors Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher. Both are tarnished by the republic's all-too-evident failures. Each man believes he can steal a march on the other by harnessing the increasingly popular National Socialists - while reining in their most alarming elements, naturally. Adolf Hitler has ideas of his own. But if he can't impose discipline on his own rebellious foot-soldiers, what chance does he have of seizing power?