Six ways to remember Weimar: The name of this small town has mythic resonances for Germans. It was the home of many of the country’s greatest classical writers and gave its name to the Weimar Republic,which was founded 100 years ago

German author Regula Venske takes a sideways look at the myths and merits of the Weimar Republic on the 100th anniversary of its creation

1. Weimar is but a myth. You may think of it as a rather small town in Thuringia, in the eastern part of Germany, housing fewer than 65,000 inhabitants. But for most Germans, Weimar simply stands for the best we could come up with: writers Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, of course. Just Google “Weimar: European Capital of Culture in 1999” and you will get the picture. There they stand, the two titans of German literature, forever doomed to monumental size, shaking hands and representing the German classical era. As the two writers shared only some productive 11 years in Weimar, until Schiller’s death in 1805, we have cleverly added the names of Christoph Martin Wieland and Johann Gottfried Herder to the classical period, thus broadening the timespan until Goethe’s death in 1832. Who cares if hardly anyone, except scholars and freaks, nowadays reads Wieland, or Herder, any more? Weimar is proud to count “as many as three entries in Unesco’s World Heritage List”, and this is what tourists come to visit Weimar for. Quite a number manage to indulge only in the World Heritage part of the myth, skipping Buchenwald or leaving it “for next time”.

2. Among the top 10 sights to visit in Weimar, the Buchenwald Memorial ranks number five of the city’s suggestions, calling it “an important venue to recall the crimes committed during the Nazi period. 500,000 visitors come here every year”. Buchenwald, of course, is not a myth. To each one of the about 250,000 people from almost 50 nations who were imprisoned there between 1937 and 1945 – among them many renowned politicians, theologians, artists and writers, such as Léon Blum, Jean Améry, Imre Kertész, Jorge Semprún and Elie Wiesel – the place was damn real. It was an infamous forced labour concentration camp where an estimated 56,000 prisoners lost their lives.

Buchenwald (“beechwood forest”) sadly represents the dark counterside of the German classical spirit. The camp was first going to be named Ettersberg concentration camp, referring to the small wooded Ettersberg hillock upon which it was established, previously known for a Baroque castle frequented by Goethe, and where European royals would go hunting. But the Nazis did not want to spoil the Goethe connections for Goethe enthusiasts by choosing the wrong name. Ironically, you will find the remains of a Goethe oak on the site of the Buchenwald memorial symbolising the Weimar-Buchenwald dichotomy in a way no writer could ever invent.

Police outside a cinema in Berlin’s Nollendorfplatz patrolling riots by Nazi goon squads against the showing of the film All Quiet on the Western Front in December 1930. The film was banned a week after it opened

CREDIT:Akg-images/TT News Agency/SVT

3. How does the Weimar Republic fit in? In 2009, the 90th anniversary of its founding date passed almost unnoticed by the German public. But in regards to the 100th anniversary, things seem to have changed. In 2013, a group of Weimar-based citizens founded the Verein Weimarer Republik (the Weimar Republic Society) with the goal of commemorating the 100th anniversary and providing academic research, public discourse and political education. Soon, with the support of the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, another museum in Weimar will open its doors to house the national memory of the Weimar democracy.

But not only does the Weimar Republic receive more attention now, there also seems to be a shift of paradigm in the perspective of how Germans view it.

It used to be that Germans, both East and West, grew up with the notion that the Weimar Republic was doomed from the beginning, and that the Weimar constitution with its presidential democracy made it easy for Adolf Hitler to rise, leading to dictatorship straight away. It may well be that people in other countries, namely the USA, would associate Weimar with the thriving arts and culture, as well as sciences, of the 1920s, recollecting names of the cultural elite that would soon be forced to emigrate and who would contribute to American culture thereafter. In Germany, we would refer to the “Golden Twenties” by using the English words rather than the German equivalent. But we tended not to think of the 1920s as a golden period in Germany. So what has changed? What suddenly makes us want to speak not only of failure and lost opportunities but of the chances and merits of the Weimar Republic instead?

Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, the greats of German classical literature, both lived in Weimar and their statues still stand outside the German National Theatre

CREDIT: Tony Roddam/Picfair

4. We are witnessing the erosion of democracy and the dissolution of the middle class as well as the corresponding political or democratic “centre” in several parts of the world, including Europe, right now. Naturally, while we try to find ways to stop this process of erosion, we want to concentrate less on the doom and learn more about past hopes and possibilities that somehow got lost in the cause of the historical process but might teach us a useful lesson now. At least one would hope that it might be this interest in history, along with the wish to do better this time, that makes us want to celebrate 100 years of the first German republic and the first German democracy.

But I wonder. Could it also be that this shift in focus might be fuelled, at least partially, by some new kind of German nationalism? Could it be that – after having reconstructed the Berlin Palace, viewed by many as a seat of imperial power from a time of militarism and national expansionism, and filling it with ethnological artefacts of often unclear provenance from a colonial past – a new kind of nationalism is now ready to reinterpret and digest even the Weimar Republic? Could it be nationalism that makes us boast of the First German Constitution as “one of the most modern constitutions that existed at the time”, having influenced several Latin American states, Japan, and even France? Weren’t we great in granting women’s suffrage as early as November 1918, and doing away with censorship, as had been demanded by brave democrats since 1849?

5. The Weimar constitution guaranteed freedom of the press and freedom of expression to every German. However, Article 118 of the Weimar constitution, which ruled out censorship, allowed for two exceptions: with regard to films and with regard to protecting German youth from pulp fiction (Schmutz und Schund, trash and rubbish...), viewing these two media as potentially highly influential and appealing to the masses. Accordingly, in May 1920, the Lichtspielgesetz was passed, prohibiting films which might endanger public order and security, hurt religious feelings or degrade the German state’s reputation in international relations. In Berlin and Munich, centres of German film production, authorities were established to check, and possibly prohibit, films meeting those criteria.

Thus, films in the Weimar Republic were the only media which had to be passed by the censors prior to presentation. Of course, this meant heated debates all through the decade. Among the most spectacular incidents were the riots by National Socialist goon squads at the opening of All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, in December 1930. Due to their constant interruptions and threats to the audience, the performance had to be stopped. A week later the Berlin-based film review board prohibited any further showings of the film in Germany. The reasons given were both that the film was a security risk and that it caused damage to the reputation of the country.

In this, they followed the National Socialist arguments, insinuating that the pacifist message would defame German soldiers and damage the reputation of Germany. It was Goebbels himself who admitted in an article that it had been their strategy to turn the issue into a matter of prestige between the movement and the Prussian administration.

Another controversy arose around the film Kuhle Wampe oder Wem gehört die Welt? (Kuhle Wampe, or Who Owns The World?) based on a script by Bertolt Brecht, in 1932. Even the members of the censorship board were highly divided in their opinions of it. Some claiming the film would incite the working masses to mistrust the state, while others cherished its high quality as a work of art. When Kuhle Wampe was prohibited, Brecht commented drily that the censors – from a police point of view – had better understood the message of his film than even his most sympathetic critics had. Public protests were partially successful, as the film was released in the end, although with specific cuts.

Protests also accompanied the passing of the law to protect the youth from three-penny trash and rubbish. But let us not overestimate the public. In his essays on Schmutz und Schund, published in various newspapers in 1926, Hein-rich Mann’s voice sounds not only sceptical but somewhat gloomy. He points out that the morals of young people have never been deteriorated by reading, but by life itself – by irresponsible elders exposing children to a life brutalised by war and post-war unemployment, inflation and poverty, and the struggle for existence. But whereas the public in Wilhelmine times, including liberal-spirited conservatives, widely protested the moralistic Lex Heinze law of 1892, Mann misses a similar cry of outrage in 1926, saying: “Nobody seems to care much anymore whether literature will be under control.”

His brother, Thomas, founding member of the literature section of the Prussian Academy of Arts, actively joined in the protest against the law on Schmutz und Schund, thus turning away from his formerly conservative, apolitical, attitude. And so did the German PEN centre, based in Berlin. Founded in 1924 by rather conservative writers, many of whom had been ardent nationalists in World War I, German PEN became quite politicised in the second half of the decade, with writers realising that it was impossible to abstain from politics and that John Galsworthy’s dictum of “No politics under any circumstances in the PEN” took a political standpoint itself. German PEN published remarkable letters of protest against censorship, be it against the prohibition of All Quiet on the Western Front, or against Carl von Ossietzky’s conviction on the basis of an allegation of espionage and his 18-month prison sentence after publishing an article on the rearmament of the German air force (prohibited by the peace treaty) in his magazine, Weltbühne.

Other famous cases could be cited, such as the debates around Arthur Schnitzler’s drama, Reigen; charges of blasphemy against a number of renowned writers, including Carl Einstein, Klabund and Carl Zuckmayer; and the voluntary withdrawal of an advertisement for Kurt Tucholsky and John Heartfield’s anti-military publication, Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association in 1929.

As the latter example shows, even if the numbers of books indicted in the end turned out to be relatively small, the laws nevertheless had a devastating effect, leading to self-censorship and a public atmosphere of hate and harassment. Ultimately, it was the Nazis who profited.

6. When the Nazi book-burnings took place in May 1933, a substantial number of renowned writers and representatives of the cultural elite had already fled into exile. One writer who remained in Germany was Erich Kästner. Standing in the crowd, he was witness to the burning of his own books.

At a PEN Congress in 1958, Kästner, by then president of German PEN, commemorated the 25th anniversary of the book burnings and warned: “The events of 1933-1945 should have been fought in 1928. Later, it was too late. One must not wait until the fight for freedom is called treason. One must not wait until the snowball has turned into an avalanche. You have to crush the rolling snowball. Nobody will stop the avalanche... You can only fight rising dictatorships before they are in power.”

Unfortunately, he did not leave a recipe as to how this could be achieved. It would be useful, even now.

Weimar’s Hall of Fame

Irmgard Keun: was a significant German novelist during the late Weimar period. In her novels she critiqued the social issues that existed in the early 1930s, which specifically included consumerism, the social injustice of Weimar Berlin’s class and gender hierarchy, and the limited role and identity of women in society. In 1933 her novels were confiscated, banned and burned by the Nazis. Although she kept publishing her works after 1935, she was ultimately forced into exile in Belgium, and later the Netherlands, in 1936.

Otto Dix: was one of the leading painters during the era. He won the Iron Cross for serving in World War I as a machine gunner on the eastern and western fronts. After the war his paintings are described as having become more cynical, political, and sombre. When Adolf Hitler took power, Dix lost his teaching job in Dresden, and his most significant works were confiscated. Like most artists, he was forced to join the Nazi government’s Reich Chamber of Fine Arts. While a part of this group he was only allowed to paint “inoffensive landscapes”. However, he did occasionally create allegorical paintings that criticised Nazi ideals. Alongside his friend and acclaimed artist George Grosz, he “drew attention to the bleaker side of life” through his paintings by depicting prostitution, violence, old age, and death. He survived Nazi rule and continued to produce anti-war paintings.

George Grosz: worked alongside Dix to depict antiwar paintings and critiques of Weimar society. After serving in World War I, he settled in Berlin. The topics that he focused on most included political corruption, militarism, the inequalities of capitalism, the mistreatment of war veterans, urban life, Weimar decadence, and eroticism. He left the country soon after Hitler came to power and his work was seen as blasphemous towards the Nazi regime and either placed in Germany’s Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich, or destroyed. He moved to the USA, where he lived until his death in 1959, teaching art in New York, and continuing to create anti-war paintings.

Erich Maria Remarque: was one of Germany’s most famous writers during the era. His work, which conveyed a strong anti-war and anti-fascist message, was condemned by the Nazi regime and burned. His German citizenship was taken away in 1938, and in 1939 he left for Switzerland and then the USA to escape from the Nazi government. His sister, Elfriede Scholz, was targeted by the Nazi regime in 1943 and was executed after being charged with “undermining morale” for stating that she considered the war to be lost. He is most famous for the acclaimed novel, All Quiet on the Western Front (1928), which was turned into an Oscar-winning film.

Summer Dosch