On its 100th anniversary, the Weimar Republic is quite visible in public discourse. Just as Wolfgang J. Mommsen advocated 40 years ago, urging his contemporaries to not repeat the “mistakes of the Weimar system”, warnings about Weimarer Verhältnisse are omnipresent. 1 Recent challenges to democracy due to a rise in populism and right wing movements all over Europe stimulated interest in the Weimar Republic. This leaves historians with an ambivalent feeling. Centenaries structure remembrance and media coverage grants scholarly literature well-deserved attention. Historical parallelisation reduces complexity and maintains a teleological narrative of the Weimar Republic as a precursor to National Socialism. This provides significant reasons to investigate “new perspectives” on Germany’s first democracy.
To the present day, Weimar historiography is shaped by two conflicting paradigms: One that interprets the new republic from the perspective of its collapse, as a period of crisis and authoritarianism paving the way for National Socialism. The other, more recent narrative describes the Weimar Republic as a laboratory of democracy and cultural modernity, placing it – in a similarly teleological way – in close proximity to the Federal Republic of Germany, its liberalisation and the emphasis on subjectivity and individuality associated with „1968“. Both interpretations served as a backdrop against which this conference discussed new lines of interpretation beyond all-too familiar historiographical patterns.
Three objectives were rather salient at the conference: Firstly, there was a strong focus on contemporary perceptions and expectations, often challenging and reinvestigating known concepts such as “leftism”, “conservatism” and “republicanism”. In particular “transgression effects” between such milieus allowed for critical perspectives, capturing the contingency and many-sidedness of Weimar political culture. Secondly, the role, use and definition of violence in the Republic’s early years were discussed vividly, reflecting a trend in current research. Thirdly, participants challenged historiographical idiosyncrasies through a shift in spatial perspectives: Confronting the metropolitan with the rural and local and putting the national in a comparative, European, and transnational perspective allowed for a broader panorama of Weimar political culture and state activity.
Contemporary Perceptions and Expectations in Weimar Political Culture
As THOMAS MERGEL (Berlin) put it in his introductory remarks, the historisation of political cultures and mentalities in the Weimar Republic beyond the normative dividing lines of democratic and non-democratic thought offers a “more prismatic” and “less unambiguous” panorama. Several speakers took up on that remark. DANIEL SIEMENS (Newcastle) investigated the concept of “authoritarian democracy” in the late Weimar era, analysing bourgeois and social democratic voices demanding democratic reforms in a rhetoric fostered in the “war youth generation” and in political radicalism. Attacks on the parliament were not exclusive to political extremism. Siemens argued that the seemingly radical attacks on the political establishment rather expressed high and idealistic expectations of democracy than a rejection of the system itself. Young intellectuals from the “war youth generation” longed for a „truthful“ version of democracy, combining authoritarianism and political romanticism. Trying to reform the political system and moving it’s political arenas to the street, they adapted an extremist and anti-democratic political discourse. RICCARDO BAVAJ (St. Andrews) pursued similar questions regarding the “life ideology” movement. While their conceptions of political leadership were often anti-pluralist and organicistic, the “life ideologists” did not perceive themselves as “anti-democratic” or reactionary but as advocates of a new political order that reconciles an organic conception of society with technical and industrial progress. The ambivalence of democratic and authoritarian political conceptions is not limited to a particular field, as DIRK SCHUMANN’s (Göttingen) contribution on Weimar liberal-conservative educationists showed. He analysed mid-1920s reform debates on “limits/boundaries of education” and the contributions by liberal-conservative educationists (Hermann Nohl, Wilhelm Flitner and Theodor Litt). Both leftist educationists and advocates of the German youth movement called for the creation of the “new man” through education. The liberal-conservatives expressed believe in the autonomy of education (Wachsenlassen) and in a productive potential of pluralist societies. On the other hand they turned – to different extends – to authoritarian and anti-democratic discourses of the time, debating the possibility to shape elitist leading figures (Führerkräfte) and how to maintain the essence and order of the German Volk.
Ambiguous concepts such as “democracy” or Volk signified different meanings for different actor groups. The same can be said of the discourse on “individuality” which is usually attributed to enlightenment, neo-Kantian thought and nineteenth-century liberalism on the one hand and a rise in consumer choices and political participation in the inter-war period on the other hand. MORITZ FÖLLMER (Amsterdam) looked for the “quest for autonomy” in areas where one would not suspect them. Contemporary meanings of “individuality” were “multi-faceted and multi-directional”: Communists did not abolish individualism. They advertised Bolshevist Russia and the utopian idea of a communist society as a place that truly allows for autonomous individuals free of capitalist restrictions. National Socialists alike endorsed a world free of “social dependencies” and “intellectual conventions”, promising true individuality within the Volksgemeinschaft, a promise that liberalism allegedly failed to keep. The following discussion contrasted this approach with its negative counterparts: debates on materialism, negative effects of modernity and the rise of nationalistic collectivism make Weimar’s quest for autonomy a twofold process.
Perceptions and mentalities that do not fit in the expected patterns of interpretation are often a matter of semantics: How do actors use and rephrase key concepts of their time? Subsequently the discussions of these contributions often circulated around the analytical use of contemporary terms. As a result, many speakers opted for a broader definition of terms such as „democracy“ or „individuality“, understanding them rather as a „cluster of ideas“ (Bavaj) than a normative concept shaped by our expectations. It is, however, challenging to capture the breadth of all significants and to narrow it down in order to create meaningful results.
Violence and Crisis in Weimar Political Culture
Dynamics of violence in the aftermath of the November Revolution and the First World War have been debated strongly in current Weimar historiography, sparked not least by Mark Jones’s book Founding Weimar, a recurring subject of discussion during the conference.2 Was the revolutionary beginning of the Republic an “incubator of violence”, boosting a new dynamic of violence that paved the way for the National Socialist outbursts of violence? ALEXANDER GALLUS (Chemnitz) sought to distance himself from both this narrative as well as the opposite reading, framing Weimar’s early years as a democratic success story. In line with the aforementioned calls for broader conceptions of analytical terms, he suggested a multi-layered understanding of the term “violence” (Gewalt). Self-descriptions of liberal-bourgeois observers suggest a semantic range of Gewalt stretching from potestas to violentia, from legitimate state authority to brutal, illegitimate and illegal violence. These findings indicate that the Weimar Republic was not as a whole perceived as a period of crisis. Nevertheless discourses of crisis shaped the early Republic’s political and legal culture. As MARTIN GEYER (Munich) argued, states of emergency were a dominant trope in Weimar political culture. As Notstand or Ausnahmezustand, among other varieties, they did not only prefigure the thinking of intellectuals like Carl Schmitt or Walter Benjamin, but a wider political and social discourse. The rhetoric of urgency shaped Weimar’s welfare state which resulted in pressing debates on crisis and Not. According to Geyer, Weimar’s very legal foundation rested on emergency legislation passed during the War and the Revolution. Despite their short-term character these emergency laws stayed in place permanently and shaped the legal constituency of the Republic, most prominently in Article 48 of the Weimar constitution.
Beyond the national perspective
Opening new perspectives on Weimar history requires transcending the familiar territorial boundaries that still define the master narratives on the period. The papers presented at the conference offered two approaches in regard to this objective. While the first turned towards Weimar’s neighbouring states and the exchange between actor groups, the second chose a transnational perspective. MARTIN SCHULZE WESSEL (Munich) investigated the manifold affiliations of German, Polish and Czech Socialists, asking for their position towards Bolshevism, the relationship of national identity and internationalism in rather young nation states as well as for the inter-European contacts in which the actors engaged. Polish and Weimar communists alike struggled finding their identity between Government participation and sectarianism and between fostering a national identity and Russian-led internationalism. With the CPSU’s focus on a respective German revolution, Czechoslovakia and Poland stayed behind at times, somewhat pushed to a more national perspective.
Putting Weimar Germany into a Russian and Central Eastern European perspective proved to be a stronghold of this conference. JAN CLAAS BEHRENDS (Berlin) shifted focus to the late years of the Republic that witnessed Stalin’s “revolution from above” and the violence it brought about. He investigated German Russia experts’ (diplomats, politicians, academics) subjective positions on Stalinism. Albeit the admiration for Stalin’s determination, these experts were baffled by the violence and did neither imagine nor wish for anything likewise to take place in Germany. While we are accustomed to describing Stalinist terror in terms of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity”, we do so in a post-Holocaust perspective. The actors lacked the terminology to describe the terror they witnessed according to our standards – a conclusion yet again turning the attention to the debate on contemporary and analytical terminology, taking into account perceptions of contemporaries and their historical contingency. So did ANNEMARIE SAMMARTINO (Oberlin) who analysed German perceptions of Russian émigrés from Tsarist bourgeoisie in Berlin as a “piece of fiction”. They were often imagined as a “mirror image” of the Bolsheviks, signifying a natural and pre-modern Russia. United with Germans in the fear of Bolshevism, these Russian émigrés were – other than the so-called “Eastern Jews” (Ostjuden) – not considered a threat or burden. They served as a contrast against which commentators built their imagery of “real” Russia. CHRISTOPH MICK (Warwick) examined European war remembrance cultures, in particular “tombs of the unknown soldier”, to critically revisit notions of a peculiar German political culture in a transnational framework. Mick described the differences in World War I remembrance divided rather by a line between defeated and victorious countries than by national cultures. Most countries made use of the memorial, which resulted in an “empty signifier” (Ziemann) that allowed opposed political groups to place it in each their framework.
These papers scrutinized communication, imagination and exchange between European countries, opting for an entangled history of inter-war Europe. It became evident that transnational discourses are often negotiated in a “national framework” (Mick). CHRISTIANE REINECKE (Leipzig) moved away from the conference’s dominant perspective on intellectual commentators towards migratory politics and border regimes implemented in the aftermath of the First World War refugee crisis, a new angle visibly stimulating the discussion. Intensifying restrictions on immigration were not a German specialty. Most European countries attempted to control their borders more fiercely, triggering an “upward spiral of restrictions”, shaping a transnational border regime that catered to high expectations of state authority and led to disappointment in the inability to fully control one’s territory. Restriction created an industry of state control infrastructure and actors crossing borders shaped and redefined the territoriality of Weimar Germany’s borders that were laid down in the treaty of Versailles.
Beyond the metropolitan perspective
The recent shift towards global and transnational history broadened our perspectives and changed the questions we ask, transcending the container logic of nation states. Did historians of the Weimar Republic miss to invert this perspective, transcending national history – a history that is often one of metropoles – from within? CHRISTOPHER DILLON (London) made this case for historiography on the Bavarian Revolution and its focus on Munich. Asking for pre-revolutionary upheavals in provincial Bavaria in the spring of 1918, namely in the cities of Ingolstadt, Hof, and Erlangen, Dillon argued that these tremors allow to grasp diverse and subjective experiences. The events were “trial runs” for the revolution characterised by spontaneous local agitation, stimulating collective action against symbols of (municipal) authority. The regional perspective highlighted, inter alia, the pivotal role of spontaneous gatherings and the high level of exchange between the local scenes. As before, the definition and operationalization of the term “revolution” was discussed. Can these tremors in fact be classified as “revolutionary” if they rather followed local interests than a take on state order? Thomas Mergel suggested a constructivist approach, classifying an event as a revolution if either the actors think of themselves as revolutionaries or observers (retrospective or contemporary) frame it as one. BENJAMIN ZIEMANN (Sheffield) took the discussion on regionality to a more general level, making his case for a “village view” on Weimar. A shift in perspective that, as the discussion showed, modern history could overall benefit from. Histories of the Weimar Republic often ignore the rural and agricultural sector in favour of industrialised metropoles even though about a third of the population was working within or related to agriculture and 35 percent of the inhabitants were living in rural settlements. A closer look can enhance the breadth and depth of Weimar historiography, grasping major social policy changes (abolition of the Gesindeordnung), new levels of politicisation (instruments of pressure agricultural actor groups possessed) and the political importance protestant rural areas and its voters held for Nazi canvassing.
New Perspectives?
The majority of contributions chose approaches that defamiliarise known narratives and tropes. The national was confronted with a European, and the metropolitan with a rural viewpoint. Political events, economic and social history – an at times neglected field in more recent Weimar historiography – and familiar tropes such as Weimar’s “modernity” and urbanism subsequently fell short in favour of investigating experiences and mentalities. However, continuing the discussion on contemporary perceptions, “transgression effects” and communication beyond political lines can create a more complex depiction of Weimar political culture, highlighting the ambiguity of key terms which serve as an integration formula with a considerable variety of purposes for different actor groups. Subsequently, many discussions concerned conceptual questions. These debates proved fruitful. They not only enhance terminological accuracy but often in themselves offer new perspectives on the familiar grand narratives of Weimar historiography by taking conflicting layers of meaning seriously.
Conference overview:
I: Memory and Master Narratives
Alexander Gallus (Technische Universität Chemnitz): Founding Narratives and Assumptions of Continuity. 1918/19 as the Turning Point of Violence in German History
Christoph Mick (University of Warwick): The Disadvantages of Defeat. War Remembrance in Weimar Germany in a European Perspective
II: The Project of Democracy
Daniel Siemens (Newcastle University): “Authoritarian Democracy” in the Late Weimar Republic
Riccardo Bavaj (University of St. Andrews): Visions of Democracy and the Radical Left
III: Navigating New Orders
Dirk Schumann (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen): Debating “Autonomy” and “Boundaries/Limits of Education” (Grenzen der Erziehung) – How Weimar Educationists Positioned Themselves towards the New Democracy
Moritz Föllmer (Universiteit van Amsterdam): The Quest for Individual Autonomy in Weimar Germany
IV: Beyond the Metropolis
Christopher Dillon (King’s College London): “The Fire of the Revolution also Burns in the Provinces”. Revolutionary Mobilization in Provincial Bavaria
Benjamin Ziemann (University of Sheffield): The Weimar Republic – A Village View
V: Liberal Democracy under Siege
Martin Geyer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München): Emergency Mentalities in the Weimar Republic
Martin Schulze Wessel (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München): The Communists of the Weimar Republic and their East Central European Context
Jan Claas Behrends (Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam): Parallel Revolutions? Stalin’s “Great Turn” and the End of Liberal Democracy in Germany (1929–1934)
VI: Borders and Aliens
Christiane Reinecke (Universität Leipzig): Reconfiguring Mobility. Weimar Germany’s New Border Regime in a Translocal Perspective
Annemarie Sammartino (Oberlin College and Conservatory): The Regional Dimensions of Germany’s Post-World War I Refugee Crisis
Notes:
1 Wolfgang J. Mommsen, „Wir sind wieder wer“. Wandlung im politischen Selbstverständnis der Deutschen, in: Jürgen Habermas (ed.), Stichworte zur „geistigen Situation der Zeit“, vol. 1: Nation und Republik, Frankfurt am Main 1979, pp. 185–209, here p. 192.
2 Mark Jones, Founding Weimar. Violence and the German Revolution of 1918-19, Cambridge 2016.