German Jews in Paris: Traversing Modernity

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-95
Author(s):  
Nils Roemer
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
World War ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Central European ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
Border Crossers ◽  
European Jewish

The article traces Central European Jewish visitors of Paris during the Weimar Republic and the 1930s and analyzes the shifting meaning of travel, exile, and the figure of the flaneur. Their travelogues articulated their affection for Paris in the aftermath of World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, marking them as border crossers in multiple ways. Writing about modern capitals such as Paris became a way to temporarily belong to them, to reimagine modernity.

The Prussian Paradigm?

2021 ◽  
pp. 197-220
Author(s):  
Helen Roche
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Boarding Schools ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
State Schools

The very first Napolas which were founded at Potsdam, Plön, and Köslin, as well as those which were subsequently founded at Naumburg, Oranienstein, Bensberg, Berlin-Spandau, and Wahlstatt, were deliberately established on the premises of the former Prussian cadet schools, which had been refashioned as civilian ‘State Boarding Schools’ (Staatliche Bildungsanstalten/Stabilas) after World War I, in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles. To an extent, the NPEA authorities deliberately wanted to resurrect the tradition of the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps at the Napolas, but in a new, Nazified guise. This chapter explores the extent to which the former cadet-school Napolas retained or regained their militaristic Prussian spirit, and examines continuities between the Prussian cadet schools, the Stabilas, and the NPEA. It begins by chronicling the demise of the cadet schools and their resurrection as civilian state schools, more or less dedicated to upholding the Weimar Republic, during the aftermath of World War I. It then goes on to chart the rise of revanchist sentiment and the formation of illegal Hitler Youth cells at the Stabilas during the early 1930s, before analysing the process of Napolisation which took place in 1933–4 in greater detail. In conclusion, the chapter sites the Napolas’ Janus-faced attitude towards the cadet-school tradition within existing debates regarding the affinities (or otherwise) between Prussianism and National Socialism, and the degree of continuity which existed between the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich.

General Von Seeckt and the Weimar Republic

1958 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-357
Author(s):  
Arthur L. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
World War ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles

The entire problem of German secret rearmament in the period following World War I is a broad and complex one. But the success of the German military in achieving rearmament in spite of the restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles may in part be attributed to the course of politics under the Weimar Republic.

Prisoners’ fantasies in Weimar film

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ofer Ashkenazi
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
World War ◽  
Modern City ◽  
The Public ◽  
Bourgeois Society ◽  
Weimar Cinema ◽  
Public Criticism

Prison cells constituted a unique sphere in post-World War I German films. Unlike most of the modern city spheres, it was a realm in which the private and the public often merged, and in which reality and fantasy incessantly intertwined. This article analyses the ways in which filmmakers of the Weimar Republic envisaged the experience within the prison, focusing on its frequent association with fantasies and hallucinations. Through the analysis of often-neglected films from the period, I argue that this portrayal of the prison enabled Weimar filmmakers to engage in public criticism against the conservative, inefficient and prejudiced institutions of law and order in Germany. Since German laws forbade direct defamation of these institutions, filmmakers such as Joe May, Wilhelm Dietherle and Georg C. Klaren employed the symbolism of the prisoner’s fantasy to propagate the urgent need for thorough reform. Thus this article suggests that Weimar cinema, contrary to common notions, was not dominated by either escapism or extremist, anti-liberal worldviews. Instead, the prison films examined in this article are in fact structured as a warning against the decline of liberal bourgeois society in the German urban centres of the late 1920s.

Ernst Jünger and Storms of Steel

2019 ◽  
pp. 22-35
Author(s):  
Elliot Neaman
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Third Reich

This chapter discusses the life and work of Ernst Jünger, who was part of a strain in modern German conservatism that tested the limits of modernity and Enlightenment rationality. He catapulted to fame as a young man on the basis of his World War I memoirs, In Storms of Steel, which made him part of the antidemocratic forces of the Weimar Republic, but he retreated into the inner emigration during the Third Reich. After 1950 he lived a reclusive life but published a stream of essays and books and an impressive diary that chronicled almost four decades of life with sharp observations on a wide range of topics. He was a cultural pessimist who thought that the rise of a unifying planetary technology and the loss of local culture meant that we were entering into a posthistorical world of fragmentation, and new forms of cultural and political tyranny.

scholarly journals Emotion, Medizin und Volksbelehrung: die Entstehung des «deutschen Kulturfilms»

Gesnerus ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-102
Author(s):  
Philipp Osten
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
German Empire ◽  
German Film ◽  
Government Institutions

This article describes the process of professionalisation of medical films in Germany between 1910 and 1920. At the beginning of this decade, government institutions showed a growing interest in hygiene campaigns and started to cooperate with medical experts as well as with professional advertisers. When the German film industry was nationalised at the end of World War I, these informal structures were strengthened. New theories described the film as a most powerful tool for propaganda purposes. This profoundly changed the expectations towards medical films. Now their content had to be bedded into the dramatised form of a photoplay. After 1918, in anticipation of the reprivatisation of the German film industry, government officials of the Weimar Republic developed complex measures to obtain and keep control over a new genre of documentary film which was now called “Deutscher Kulturfilm”. Some of the political expectations linked to the Kulturfilm can be exemplified in the first documentary of feature length released by the Berlinbased Universal Film Corporation in 1920. It contained elements of medical films that had been shot during the last decade of the German Empire, and it was newly composed in 1919 to meet the presumable needs of a broader public in an uncertain democratic future.

scholarly journals Traktat wersalski – perspektywa cywilizacji pokoju

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
Anna Raźny
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
New Order ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
World War ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
Peace Accord ◽  
International Debate ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
Peace And Justice ◽  
Paris Peace Conference

The Treaty of Versailles - the Vision of the Civilization of Peace The Treaty of Versailles, the details of which were ironed out at the Paris Peace Conference, officially brought to an end World War I. The Conference represented the first international debate on the problem of peace. Twenty-seven victorious nations participated. The defeated states of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria were not allowed to take part in the deliberations – their only role was to sign separate versions of the treaty put before them. Bolshevik Russia was also not invited to the peace conference. On March 3, 1918, the latter signed its own peace accord in Brest with Germany and Austria, Hungary and their allies - Bulgaria and Turkey - thus violating its commitments to the Entente. This was because attendance at the peace conference depended not only on the attitude of the participants to the warring central states, but also on the moral norms recognized as binding in achieving peace. The Treaty was a testament not only to the expectations of its signatories towards their defeated opponents, but also to their intellectual and ethical aspirations with regard to attaining peaceful coexistence. It established many new borders on the map of Europe and introduced a new order on the continent, one that was not only political in form, but also cultural and civilizational. Its foundations were to be built on the values of peace and justice. Therefore, there are grounds for describing the new order created on their basis as the civilization of peace. Wypracowany na paryskiej konferencji pokojowej traktat wersalski zakończył oficjalnie I wojnę światową. Konferencja ta pierwszą międzynarodową debatą poświęconą problemom pokoju. Uczestniczyło w niej 27 zwycięskich państw oraz z nimi sprzymierzonych i stowarzyszonych. Pokonane Niemcy oraz Austria i Węgry, Turcja i Bułgaria nie zostały dopuszczone do obrad - przedstawiono im jedynie do podpisu oddzielne wersje traktatu. Na konferencję pokojową nie zaproszono również bolszewickiej Rosji, która 3 marca 1918 roku podpisała w Brześciu traktat pokojowy z Niemcami i Austrią, Węgrami oraz ich sprzymierzeńcami - Bułgarią i Turcją – łamiąc tym samym porozumienia sojusznicze Ententy. Uczestnictwo w konferencji pokojowej uwarunkowane było bowiem nie tylko stosunkiem do prowadzących wojnę państw centralnych, ale również do norm moralnych, uznanych za obowiązujące w osiąganiu pokoju. Traktat był świadectwem nie tylko oczekiwań jego sygnatariuszy wobec pokonanych przeciwników, ale również ich aspiracji intelektualnych i etycznych, ukierunkowanych na pokojowe współistnienie. Ustanowił wiele nowych granic międzypaństwowych na mapie Europy oraz zaprowadził w jej przestrzeni nowy ład, nie tylko polityczny, ale również kulturowo-cywilizacyjny. .Jego fundament stanowić miały wartości pokoju i sprawiedliwości. Istnieją zatem podstawy, aby tworzony na ich gruncie ład nazwać cywilizacją pokoju.

Arms intervention: Weimar Germany, post-imperial influence and weapons trafficking in warlord China

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 510-528
Author(s):  
Ned Richardson-Little
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
World War ◽  
German State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
Arms Trade ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
Arms Embargo

The Treaty of Versailles aimed to strip Germany of both its colonial empire and the global reach of its arms industry. Yet the conflicts in warlord-era China led to the reestablishment of German influence on the other side of the world via the arms trade. Weimar Germany had declared a policy of neutrality and refused to take sides in the Chinese civil war in an effort to demonstrate that as a post-colonial power, it could now act as an honest broker. From below, however, traffickers based in Germany and German merchants in China worked to evade Versailles restrictions and an international arms embargo to supply warlords with weapons of war. Although the German state officially aimed to remain neutral, criminal elements, rogue diplomats, black marketeers and eventually military adventurers re-established German influence in the region by becoming key advisors and suppliers to the victorious Guomindang. Illicit actors in Germany and China proved to be crucial in linking the two countries and in eventually overturning the arms control regimes that were imposed in the wake of World War I.

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