Editing Weimar culture (section)

== The arts ==
[[File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-P047336, Berlin, Mary Wigman-Studio.jpg|thumb|[[Mary Wigman]] (left)]]
The fourteen years of the Weimar era were also marked by explosive intellectual productivity. German artists made multiple cultural contributions in the fields of [[literature]], [[art]], [[architecture]], [[music]], [[dance]], [[drama]], and the new medium of the [[motion picture]]. Political theorist [[Ernst Bloch]] described Weimar culture as a ''[[Fifth-century Athens|Periclean Age]]''.

German visual art, music, and literature were all strongly influenced by [[German Expressionism]] at the start of the Weimar Republic. By 1920, a sharp turn was taken towards the {{lang|de|Neue Sachlichkeit}} [[New Objectivity]] outlook. New Objectivity was not a strict movement in the sense of having a clear manifesto or set of rules. Artists gravitating towards this aesthetic defined themselves by rejecting the themes of expressionism—romanticism, fantasy, subjectivity, raw emotion and impulse—and focused instead on precision, deliberateness, and depicting the factual and the real.

''[[Kirkus Reviews]]'' remarked upon how much Weimar art was political:<ref name="KirkusLaqueurUK">Kirkus UK review of Laqueur, Walter ''Weimar: A cultural history, 1918–1933''</ref> {{blockquote|fiercely experimental, iconoclastic and left-leaning, spiritually hostile to big business and bourgeois society and at daggers drawn with Prussian militarism and authoritarianism. Not surprisingly, the old autocratic German establishment saw it as 'decadent art', a view shared by Adolf Hitler who became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. The public burning of 'unGerman books' by Nazi students on Unter den Linden on 10th May 1933 was but a symbolic confirmation of the catastrophe which befell not only Weimar art under Hitler but the whole tradition of enlightenment liberalism in Germany, a tradition whose origins went back to the 18th century city of Weimar, home to both Goethe and Schiller.}}

One of the first major events in the arts during the Weimar Republic was the founding of the {{lang|de|Novembergruppe}} ([[November Group (German)|November Group]]) on 3 December 1918. This organization was established in the aftermath of the November beginning of the [[German Revolution of 1918–1919]], when [[Communism|communists]], anarchists and pro-republic supporters fought in the streets for control of the government. In 1919, the Weimar Republic was established. Around 100 artists of many genres who identified themselves as avant-garde joined the November Group. They held 19 exhibitions in Berlin until the group was banned by the Nazi regime in 1933. The group also had chapters throughout Germany during its existence, and brought the German avant-garde art scene to world attention by holding exhibits in Rome, Moscow and Japan.

Its members also belonged to other art movements and groups during the Weimar Republic era, such as architect [[Walter Gropius]] (founder of [[Bauhaus]]), and [[Kurt Weill]] and [[Bertolt Brecht]] ([[agitprop]] theatre).<ref>{{cite book|last=Dempsey|first=Amy|title=Styles, Schools and Movements: The Essential Encyclopaedic Guide to Modern Art|year=2010|publisher=Thames & Hudson|isbn=978-0-500-28844-3|pages=128–9}}</ref> The artists of the November Group kept the spirit of radicalism alive in German art and culture during the Weimar Republic. Many of the painters, sculptors, music composers, architects, playwrights, and filmmakers who belonged to it, and still others associated with its members, were the same ones whose art would later be denounced as "[[degenerate art]]" by Adolf Hitler.

===Visual arts===
{{See also|German art#Weimar period}}
[[File:Hoch-Cut With the Kitchen Knife.jpg|thumb|''Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany'' (1919) by [[Hannah Höch]], a [[Dada]] pioneer of [[photomontage]] art]]
The Weimar Republic era began in the midst of several major movements in the fine arts that continued into the 1920s. [[German Expressionism]] had begun before World War I and continued to have a strong influence throughout the 1920s, although artists were increasingly likely to position themselves in opposition to expressionist tendencies as the decade went on.

[[Dada]] had begun in Zurich during World War I, and became an international phenomenon. Dada artists met and reformed groups of like-minded artists in Paris, Berlin, Cologne, and New York City. In Germany, [[Richard Huelsenbeck]] established the Berlin group, whose members included [[Jean Arp]], [[John Heartfield]], [[Wieland Hertzfelde]], [[Johannes Baader]], [[Raoul Hausmann]], [[George Grosz]] and [[Hannah Höch]]. Machines, technology, and a strong [[Cubism]] element were features of their work. Jean Arp and [[Max Ernst]] formed a Cologne Dada group, and held a Dada Exhibition there that included a work by Ernst that had an axe "placed there for the convenience of anyone who wanted to attack the work".<ref name="Dempsey118">{{cite book|last=Dempsey|first=Amy|title=Styles, Schools and Movements: The Essential Encyclopaedic Guide to Modern Art|year=2010|publisher=Thames & Hudson|isbn=978-0-500-28844-3|pages=118}}</ref> [[Kurt Schwitters]] established his own solitary one-man Dada "group" in Hanover, where he filled two stories of a house (the ''Merzbau'') with sculptures cobbled together with found objects and ephemera, each room dedicated to a notable artist friend of Schwitter's. The house was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1943.<ref name="Dempsey118"/>

The [[New Objectivity]] artists did not belong to a formal group. However, various Weimar Republic artists were oriented towards the concepts associated with it. Broadly speaking, artists linked with New Objectivity include [[Käthe Kollwitz]], [[Otto Dix]], [[Max Beckmann]], [[George Grosz]], [[John Heartfield]], [[Conrad Felixmüller]], [[Christian Schad]], and [[Rudolf Schlichter]], who all "worked in different styles, but shared many themes: the horrors of war, social hypocrisy and moral decadence, the plight of the poor and the rise of Nazism".<ref>{{cite book|last=Dempsey|first=Amy|title=Styles, Schools and Movements: The Essential Encyclopaedic Guide to Modern Art|year=2010|publisher=Thames & Hudson|isbn=978-0-500-28844-3|pages=149}}</ref>

Otto Dix and George Grosz referred to their own movement as [[Verism (Germany)|Verism]], a reference to the Roman classical [[Verism]] approach called ''verus'', meaning "truth", warts and all. While their art is recognizable as a bitter, cynical criticism of life in Weimar Germany, they were striving to portray a sense of realism that they saw missing from expressionist works.<ref>{{cite book|last=Barton|first=Brigid S.|title=Otto Dix and Die neue Sachlichkeit, 1918-1925|year=1981|publisher=UMI Research Press|isbn=978-0-8357-1151-7|pages=83}}</ref> New Objectivity became a major undercurrent in all of the arts during the Weimar Republic.

<gallery>
File:Kaethe Kollwitz - Mutter mit Zwillingen-2.jpg|''Mother with Children'' by [[Käthe Kollwitz]], 1927–37
File:Nordmarkplakat.jpg|A [[New Objectivity]]-style poster by caricaturist [[Herbert Marxen]] (1922), condemned by the press as anti-futurist.
File:Kirchner - Straßenszene bei Nacht.jpg|''Street Scene at Night'' by [[Ernst Ludwig Kirchner]], 1926-27
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-08322, Plastik von Rudolf Belling.jpg|A [[Rudolf Belling]] sculpture exhibited in 1929
<!-- Commented out: File:George grosz-the eclipse of the sun.jpg|[[The Eclipse of the Sun]] (1926) by [[George Grosz]]. -->
</gallery>

===Design===
The design field during the Weimar Republic witnessed some radical departures from styles that had come before it. [[Bauhaus]]-style designs are distinctive, and synonymous with modern design. Designers from these movements turned their energy towards a variety of objects, from furniture, to typography, to buildings. [[Dada]]'s goal of critically rethinking design was similar to [[Bauhaus]], but whereas the earlier Dada movement was an aesthetic approach, the [[Bauhaus]] was literally a school, an institution that combined a former school of industrial design with a school of arts and crafts. The founders intended to fuse the arts and crafts with the practical demands of industrial design, to create works reflecting the [[New Objectivity]] aesthetic in Weimar Germany. [[Walter Gropius]], a founder of the Bauhaus school, stated: "we want an architecture adapted to our world of machines, radios and fast cars."<ref>{{cite book|last=Curtis|first=William|title="Walter Gropius, German Expressionism, and the Bauhaus". Modern Architecture Since 1900 (2nd Ed. ed.).|year=1987|publisher=Prentice-Hall|isbn=978-0-13-586694-8|pages=309–316}}</ref> Berlin and other parts of Germany still have many surviving landmarks of the architectural style at the Bauhaus. The mass housing projects of [[Ernst May]] and [[Bruno Taut]] are evidence of markedly creative designs being incorporated as a major feature of new planned communities. [[Erich Mendelsohn]] and [[Hans Poelzig]] are other prominent Bauhaus architects, while [[Mies van der Rohe]] is noted for his architecture and his industrial and household furnishing designs.

Painter [[Paul Klee]] was a faculty member of Bauhaus. His lectures on modern art (now known as the [[Paul Klee Notebooks]]) at the Bauhaus have been compared for importance to Leonardo's ''[[Treatise on Painting]]'' and Newton's ''[[Principia Mathematica]]'', constituting the Principia Aesthetica of a new era of art;<ref>[[Guilo Carlo Argan]] "Preface", Paul Klee, The Thinking Eye, (ed. Jürg Spiller), Lund Humphries, London, 1961, p.13.</ref><ref>[[Herbert Read]] (1959) ''[https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=786516 A coincise history of modern painting]'', London, p.186</ref>

[[Bruno Taut]] and [[Adolf Behne]] founded the [[Arbeitsrat für Kunst]] (Workers' Council for Art) in 1919. Their aim was to assert pressure for political change on the Weimar Republic government, that would benefit the management of architecture and arts management, similar to Germany's large councils for workers and soldiers. This Berlin organization had around 50 members.<ref>{{cite book|last=Dempsey|first=Amy|title=Styles, Schools and Movements: The Essential Encyclopaedic Guide to Modern Art|year=2010|publisher=Thames & Hudson|isbn=978-0-500-28844-3|pages=126}}</ref>

Still another influential affiliation of architects was the group [[Der Ring]] (The Ring) established by ten architects in Berlin in 1923-24, including: [[Otto Bartning]], [[Peter Behrens]], [[Hugo Häring]], [[Erich Mendelsohn]], [[Mies van der Rohe]], [[Bruno Taut]] and [[Max Taut]]. The group promoted the progress of modernism in architecture.

<gallery>
File:Wolfsonian-FIU Museum - IMG 8232.JPG|Armchair, model MR-20, 1927, by designer [[Mies van der Rohe]], manufactured by Bamberg Metallwerkstatten, Berlin
File:Theo van Doesburg Bilanz des Bauhauses.jpg|[[Bauhaus]]-style [[typography]], [[Theo van Doesburg]] (1923)
File:Borsig AG Hochhaus Berlin-Tegel.jpg|A highrise of the German Borsig company, made in the spirit of brick expressionism by [[Eugen Schmohl]] (1922–1924). It still stands in the [[Tegel]] district of [[Berlin]].
</gallery>

===Literature===
Writers such as [[Alfred Döblin]], [[Erich Maria Remarque]] and the brothers [[Heinrich Mann|Heinrich]] and [[Thomas Mann]] presented a bleak look at the world and the failure of politics and society through literature. Foreign writers also travelled to Berlin, lured by the city's dynamic, freer culture. The [[decadent]] [[cabaret]] scene of Berlin was documented by Britain's [[Christopher Isherwood]], such as in his novel ''[[Goodbye to Berlin]]'' which was later adapted as the play ''[[I Am a Camera]]''.<ref name="ThompsonB"/>

Eastern religions such as [[Buddhism]] were becoming more accessible in Berlin during the era, as Indian and East Asian musicians, dancers, and even visiting monks came to Europe. [[Hermann Hesse]] embraced Eastern philosophies and spiritual themes in his novels.

Cultural critic [[Karl Kraus (writer)|Karl Kraus]], with his brilliantly controversial magazine ''Die Fackel'', advanced the field of satirical journalism, becoming the literary and political conscience of this era.<ref>Selz 45</ref>

Weimar Germany also saw the publication of some of the world's first openly gay literature. In 1920 [[Erwin von Busse]] published a collection of stories about sexually charged encounters between men and it was promptly censored.<ref>{{cite book | author = Granand | title= Berlin Garden of Erotic Delights |publisher = Warbler Press | date = 2022 | translator-first1= Michael | translator-last1 = Gillespie | isbn = 978-1-957240-24-4 }}</ref> Other authors of such material include [[Klaus Mann]], [[Anna Elisabet Weirauch]], [[Christa Winsloe]], [[Erich Ebermayer]], and [[Max René Hesse]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Chamberlin |first1=Rick |title=Coming out of His Father's Closet: Klaus Mann's 'Der fromme Tanz' as an Anti-'Tod in Venedig' |journal=Monatshefte |date=2005 |volume=97 |issue=4 |pages=615–627 |doi=10.3368/m.XCVII.4.615 |jstor=30154241 |s2cid=219197869 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Huneke |first1=S. C. |title=The Reception of Homosexuality in Klaus Mann's Weimar Era Works |journal=Monatshefte |date=1 March 2013 |volume=105 |issue=1 |pages=86–100 |doi=10.1353/mon.2013.0027 |s2cid=162360017 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Nenno |first1=Nancy P. |chapter=Bildung and Desire: Anna Elisabet Weirauch's Der Skorpion |title=Queering the Canon: Defying Sights in German Literature and Culture |date=1998 |pages=207–221 }}{{ISBN?}}</ref>

===Theatre===
The theatres of [[Berlin]] and [[Frankfurt am Main]] were graced with drama by [[Ernst Toller]], [[Bertolt Brecht]], [[cabaret]], and stage direction by [[Max Reinhardt]] and [[Erwin Piscator]]. Many theatre works were sympathetic towards Marxist themes, or were overt experiments in propaganda, such as the [[agitprop theatre]] by Brecht and Weill. Agitprop theatre is named through a combination of the words "agitation" and "propaganda". Its aim was to add elements of public protest (agitation) and persuasive politics (propaganda) to the theatre, in the hope of creating a more activist audience. Among other works, Brecht and [[Kurt Weill]] collaborated on the musical or opera ''[[The Threepenny Opera]]'' (1928), also filmed, which remains a popular evocation of the period.

Toller was the leading German expressionist playwright of the era. He later became one of the leading proponents of [[New Objectivity]] in the theatre. The avant-garde theater of Bertolt Brecht and Max Reinhardt in Berlin was the most advanced in Europe, being rivaled only by that of Paris.<ref name="KirkusLaqueurUK"/>

The Weimar years saw a flourishing of political and grotesque cabaret which, at least for the English-speaking world, has become iconic for the period through works such as ''[[The Berlin Stories]]'' by the English writer [[Christopher Isherwood]], who lived in Berlin from 1929-33.<ref name="Doyle 2013"/> The musical and then the film ''[[Cabaret (musical)|Cabaret]]'' were based upon Isherwood's misadventures at Nollendorfstrasse 17 in the Schöneberg district where he lived with cabaret singer [[Jean Ross]].<ref name="Doyle 2013">{{cite news | last = Doyle | first = Rachel | title = Looking for Christopher Isherwood's Berlin | newspaper = [[The New York Times]] | page = TR10 | date = 12 April 2013 | df = dmy-all | access-date = 18 June 2018 | url = https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/travel/looking-for-christopher-isherwoods-berlin.html}}</ref> The main center for political cabaret was Berlin, with performers like comedian [[Otto Reutter]].<ref>[[Peter Gay]] (1968) ''[[Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider]]'' p.131</ref> [[Karl Valentin]] was a master of grotesque cabaret.

Historian Peter Jelavich has written extensively about minstrelsy in the Weimar cabaret. In his book ''Berlin Cabaret'' he writes that in 1920s Germany "blacks became symbols of a radically new cultural sensibility" and that the reception of minstrelsy in the revue cemented in the idea in Germany that "the United States was both the most modern and the most 'primitive' of nations."<ref>Peter Jelavich: [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674067622 Berlin Cabaret] Harvard University Press, 1996.</ref>

===Music===
Concert halls heard the [[Atonality|atonal]] and [[modernism (music)|modern music]] of [[Alban Berg]], [[Arnold Schoenberg]], and [[Kurt Weill]]. [[Hanns Eisler]] and [[Paul Dessau]] were other modernist composers of the era. [[Richard Strauss]], in his 50s at the start of the period, continued to compose, his work mostly operas including ''[[Intermezzo (opera)|Intermezzo]]'' (1924) and ''[[Die ägyptische Helena]]'' (1928).

===Modern dance===
[[Rudolf von Laban]] and [[Mary Wigman]] laid the foundations for the development of [[contemporary dance]].{{cn|date=June 2022}}

===Cinema===
[[File:Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel.png|thumb|''[[The Blue Angel]]'' (1930) was directed by [[Josef von Sternberg]].]]

At the beginning of the Weimar era, cinema meant silent films. [[German expressionist cinema|Expressionist films]] featured plots exploring the dark side of human nature. They had elaborate expressionist design sets, and the style was typically nightmarish in atmosphere. ''[[The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari]]'' (1919), directed by [[Robert Wiene]], is usually credited as the first German expressionist film. The sets depict distorted, warped-looking buildings in a German town, while the plot centres around a mysterious, magical cabinet that has a clear association with a casket. [[F. W. Murnau]]'s vampire horror film ''[[Nosferatu]]'' was released in 1922. [[Fritz Lang]]'s ''[[Dr. Mabuse the Gambler]]'' (1922) was described as "a sinister tale" that portrays "the corruption and social chaos so much in evidence in Berlin and more generally, according to Lang, in Weimar Germany".<ref name="Hayward171">{{cite book|last=Hayward|first=Susan|title=Cinema studies: the key concepts|year=2006|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0-415-36781-3|pages=171}}</ref> [[Futurism]] is another favourite expressionist theme, shown corrupted into a force of oppression in the [[dystopia]] of ''[[Metropolis (1927 film)|Metropolis]]'' (1927). The self-deluded lead characters in many expressionist films echo [[Goethe's Faust]], and Murnau indeed retold the tale in his film ''[[Faust (1926 film)|Faust]]''.

German expressionism was not the dominant type of popular film in Weimar Germany and were outnumbered by the production of costume dramas, often about folk legends, which were enormously popular with the public.<ref name="Hayward171"/> The Weimar era's most groundbreaking film studio was the [[Universum Film AG|UFA]] studio.

Silent films continued to be made throughout the 1920s, in parallel with the early years of sound films during the final years of the Weimar Republic. Silent films had certain advantages for filmmakers, such as the ability to hire an international cast, since spoken accents were irrelevant. Thus, American and British actors were easily able to collaborate with German directors and cast-members on films made in Germany (for example, the collaborations of [[Georg Pabst]] and [[Louise Brooks]]). When sound films started being produced in Germany, some filmmakers experimented with versions in more than one language, filmed simultaneously. 
[[File:KoenerAndHirschfeld.png|thumb|left|A scene from ''[[Different from the Others]]'' (1919), a film made in Berlin, whose main character struggles with his homosexuality]]

When the musical ''[[The Threepenny Opera]]'' was filmed by director Georg Pabst, he filmed the first version with a French-speaking cast (1930), then a second version with a German-speaking cast (1931). An English version was planned but never materialized.<ref>{{cite book|last=Robertson|first=James Crighton|title=The hidden cinema: British film censorship in action, 1913–1975|year=1993|publisher=Psychology Press|isbn=978-0-415-09034-6|pages=53}}</ref> The Nazis destroyed the original negative print of the German version in 1933, and it was reconstructed after the War ended.<ref>{{cite book|last=Robertson|first=James Crighton|title=The hidden cinema: British film censorship in action, 1913–1975|year=1993|publisher=Psychology Press|isbn=978-0-415-09034-6|pages=54}}</ref> ''[[The Blue Angel]]'' (1930), directed by [[Josef von Sternberg]] with the leads played by [[Marlene Dietrich]] and [[Emil Jannings]], was filmed simultaneously in English and German (a different supporting cast was used for each version). Although it was based on a 1905 story written by [[Heinrich Mann]], the film is often seen as topical in that it depicts the doomed romance between a Berlin professor and a cabaret dancer. However, critics differ on this interpretation, with the absence of modern urban amenities such as automobiles being noted.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Gemünden, Gerd |author2=Mary R. Desjardins |name-list-style=amp |title=Dietrich Icon|year=2006|publisher=Duke University Press|isbn=978-0-8223-3819-2|pages=147–8}}</ref>

Cinema in Weimar culture did not shy away from controversial topics, but dealt with them explicitly. ''[[Diary of a Lost Girl]]'' (1929) directed by [[Georg Wilhelm Pabst]] and starring [[Louise Brooks]], deals with a young woman who is thrown out of her home after having an illegitimate child, and is then forced to become a prostitute to survive. This trend of dealing frankly with provocative material in cinema began immediately after the end of the War. In 1919, [[Richard Oswald]] directed and released two films, that met with press controversy and action from police vice investigators and government censors. ''Prostitution'' dealt with women forced into [[Sexual slavery|white slavery]], while ''[[Different from the Others]]'' dealt with a homosexual man's conflict between his sexuality and social expectations;<ref>{{cite book|last=Gordon|first=Mel|author-link=Mel Gordon (professor)|title=The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber|year=2006|publisher=[[Feral House]]|location=Los Angeles|isbn=978-1-932595-12-3|pages=55–6}}</ref> and in October 1920 censors ended its release to the public.<ref>{{Cite book |url= |title=Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity |last=Beachy |first=Robert |year= 2014 |publisher=[[Vintage Books]] | location = New York | isbn=978-0-307-47313-4 |page=166}}</ref> By the end of the decade, similar material met with little, if any opposition when it was released in Berlin theatres. [[William Dieterle]]'s ''[[Sex in Chains]]'' (1928), and Pabst's ''[[Pandora's Box (1929 film)|Pandora's Box]]'' (1929) deal with homosexuality among men and women, respectively, and were not censored. Homosexuality was also present more tangentially in other films from the period.