We begin our journey into the filmography of Ernst Lubitsch with a bit of scene-setting, as Simon Fraser University assistant professor Lauren Rossi joins us to discuss the history of Weimar Germany. Our discussion is wide-ranging, beginning with the Napoleonic era and ending with the downfall of the Weimar republic; in focusing on this period, we aim to provide context as to the political and social forces that shaped Ernst Lubitsch’s worldview and artistic practice.
NEXT WEEK:
FILM FORMALLY co-host Willa Ross joins us on December 13th to discuss WHEN I WAS DEAD aka WHERE IS MY TREASURE, Lubitsch’s oldest surviving directorial work. For details on where to find this film, check out our resources page.
WORKS CITED:
WEIMAR GERMANY : PROMISE AND TRAGEDY by Chris Weitz
THE COMING OF THE THIRD REICH by Richard J. Evans
WHAT I SAW by Joseph Roth
I SHALL BEAR WITNESS: THE DIARIES OF VIKTOR KLEMPERER by Viktor Klemperer
MOMA’s Exhibition Catalog for German Expressionism: THE GRAPHIC IMPULSE
Host: @DevanAGScott
Resources and Shownotes: https://www.movingimageagency.com/hwldiresources
Beginnings are always difficult yes par if cousin NOA suddenly turned out to be Romeo having suffer with Juliet who might become Cleopatra how would you Start I would start a be cocktails mhm this is how would Lage do it a podcast in which we discuss the works of director erns luich one film at a time or at least starting in our next episode for our series premiere I’ve convinced someone far more qualified than myself
To discuss modern German history so we might contextualize lit’s early career our conversation starts with Napoleon encompasses the whole of the 19th century the Great War through to the viar era and Beyond I hope that you’ll enjoy it as much as I did come visit erc.com if you’d like show notes
Resources as to where you might find these highly obscure movies we’ll be discussing or just to say hi welcome we are here with Lauren F Rossi an assistant professor in the department of history at Simon Fraser University can you let us know a little bit about yourself and what you specialize in sure
Uh at SFU I teach courses on the two World Wars on comparative genocide and on Holocaust studies but my research interests are primarily in modern Germany so 1871 to the present and primarily cultural and social history so politics and and the wars and Military stuff is great but my research interests
Are actually my first book was about the role of religion and faith and the justifications that priests came up with for having to serve in the military during World War II well thank you so much for making the time to be here with us on yeah thanks for having me yeah and
On our extremely Niche film podcast so uh we are not going to talk about erns luit much if at all today um what I would like to do is to give me and you The Listener hello waving to you a little bit of a grounding in the place
And time that erns lubich grew his roots as an artist um of course he was born in 1892 and joined Max reinhard’s uh Theater Company in his 20s uh which would have been the early 1910s he started his directing career in 1915 16 um before eventually leaving Germany for
Uh reasons of Hollywood Came Calling as David Kat would say so we want to rewind a little bit beyond that 1892 date and to start I’d like to uh quote uh Richard Evans with the question that opens his uh book The Coming of the Third Reich
Which is is it okay to start with bismar uh So my answer to that is I’ve never started with bismar uh when I teach German history I think uh even if you’re just teaching modern German history which tends to be defined as as beginning with the Inception of the
Nation state the the unification of Germany which is Bismark in 1871 you can’t understand how that happened if you don’t go back to what was there before and maybe that’s a problem that plagues all historians how do you decide where to start because there’s always something that came
Before but I think for me um I would actually quote a different German historian Thomas nippard who famously began his history with in the beginning of Germany was Napoleon I would go all the way back to Napoleon because it was really the arrival of Napoleon’s armies in Central
Europe before there was a Germany so germane speaking lands but but um dozens of of independent kingdoms and duches and and principalities it was the arrival of the French armies that really instigated a sense of German nationalism that spread throughout this this area and then it took another several decades
Seven decades for uh the right circumstances to come about to allow Germany to unify as as what we know today as Germany and it was bismar who oversaw that through force of Personality or or happy circumstance for him uh but it it took seven decades
About so so when I say to my students Germany started in 1871 but really it sort of cooked for several decades before that and it had a lot to do with um non-german actors that that came in and sort of lit fires underneath them so to speak and uh how did the failed
Revolution of 1848 play into that um it’s often called I’ve seen this reference in numerous places the idea in air quotes listeners Germany reached its turning point and quote unquote failed to turn failed to turn yes yeah that always makes me laugh and it’s as a graduate student that’s what I was
Taught and then I was sort of taught that such a such a categorization is rooted in a sort of implicit understanding that the British and French models were the quote unquote right models that Germany failed to emulate um so so the failure refers to German liberalism and 1848 meant that the the
Revolutionaries really who were liberal politically and nationalists dedicated to to the realization of an independent United Germany they failed to somehow Garner broad enough support for the evolution of of a Nation State along liberal lines and that they somehow doomed German liberalism because what eventually happened with bismar who was
Not at all a liberal he was he was quite fiercely um locked into different kinds of confrontation with him for most of his political career uh he is the one who oversaw the unification of Germany and therefore it was not along liberal lines so so that quotation refers to um
A certain understanding of of the evolution of the German nation state which failed to become liberal along the French or British examples so what did 1848 have to do with unification well it had a great deal to do with it because it meant the Liberals
Were not really uh in charge of it or were not overseeing it it meant that liberals uh who didn’t abandon their ideals um had to work with other interests and other groups who weren’t necessarily interested in realizing a Germany that would look and act the same way uh and it meant that conservative
Forces spearheaded by bismar but also by different leaders in different areas of the german-speaking lands of Central Europe also had a great deal of political power particularly the pressian king who ends up becoming German Emperor with bismarc as Chancellor and who is that I have to think about this William the
First um the Holan Dynasty which was the leading House of the Kingdom of Prussia named had three names that they recycled Frederick William and Frederick William and so um William I first King of Prussia then became William the first emperor of Germany in 1871 and it was as a result of the
Kingdom of Prussia uh winning a series of wars with neighboring countries and this is where um the sort of the might and honor and Prestige of the pressian army becomes the backbone of of a German military that is also widely respected and honored outside of Germany because
Of these military victories MH it also means that the German nation state that was realized in 1871 was born of of war and violence and bismar was sort of essential essentialness he was an he was a conservative East Prussian Aristocrat who insisted in 1871 after the third war
With France Germany’s age-old enemy this was the the reversal of Napoleon’s victories seven decades AG earlier right insisted that he wasn’t interested in war anymore that he was satisfied and that the German Empire as it then was formed was complete he wouldn’t keep gobbling up neighboring countries um he
Did take chunks of France Alas and Lorraine he did take take a chunk of Denmark um after that first war with Denmark and he um sidelined Austria completely this this the middle war was with Austria and it was the defeat actually of Austria that maybe didn’t precipitate but continued the downward
Spiral of the Austrian Empire which in 1815 had been the authority on the continent and it solidified precious place as as um the dominant power in Central Europe and and therefore the dominant power in United Germany they kind of uh look forward to what was to come in the 20th century there’s often
This common I’d say belief that Germany was uniquely situated to fall into this kind of abyss of violence that happened you know that occurred with the um you know in 1933 and this almost um uh fatalistic attitude towards that right that somehow Germany of all countries uh
Had a unique um set of ingredients um I I warn my students against that um because as a historian I have to say there’s nothing inevitable at any point in history and uh second that such an understanding of the evolution of German history is is predicated on reading it
Backwards really you’re starting in 33 or or really you’re starting in like 41 or 42 and you’re looking backwards to find this pattern that if you if you start from the other end so to speak 1871 or earlier 1892 whatever and go forwards there’s actually nothing inevitable about about 1933 and there
Were so many other points at which something else might have come about quite easily um and you could you could do the same with the with the histories of other nation states it’s just that Germany has such such powerful in dark history I think that they’re the
Favorite to to sort of play with history in this way Nazism fascism Hitler there’s no glimmer at all of him at the end of the the 19th turn of the 20th century in Germany while we might focus on the authoritarian political structure the dominance of Prussia the the glory
Of the military and militarism it had a constitution it had a parliament that while its powers were quite limited it it did have control over the budget the emperor was not all powerful certainly depended on the chancellor bismar was not all powerful he owed his position to
The emperor and while he got along very well with and was supported by the first emperor that he served the the first emperor of Germany his successor William II couldn’t stand him and bisar didn’t last very long he was dismissed quite abruptly in 1890 right um so there are
So there are all these sort of I wouldn’t call them checks inbalances because that brings to mind the American system and really there’s not a lot of comparison there um but there are there are you call them ingredients um there there are elements to the German situation that I think are worth bearing
In mind when we’re tempted to sort of fast forward and see this as simply a a staging ground for what comes later um it almost reduces I think to me the the uh the the situation and achievements of especially I think viar Germany as almost a Prelude to absolutely you know
What people think is the main event in giant air quotes listeners yeah historians have also tended to treat viar as as a situation that was inevitably going to fail and it had all sorts of problems that weren’t really present um prior to World War I but but
Again it was a very different political structure I would argue that that came about in 1919 leading us to the kind of uh direct pre-war era I say the turn of the century um what sort of forces were were at work in Germany and German’s attitudes leading up to that war what
Expectations did Germans have there but I also want to touch upon the sort of nature of the constitutional monarchy there how that played into it and the tensions there between the conservatives who to my understanding kind of held um civil liberties in the Social Democrat sense in contempt indeed um so how all
That played into what occurred during the war and the myths that came out of that so there’s a couple of different Arenas that we have to sort of look at here one is of course the relationship between Germany and its neighbors and the evolution of that relationship
Between say the early 1870s and the first decade and a half of the 20th century and the other is the um domestic the sort of internal political system within Germany and there they’re connected obviously in in lots of important and complicated ways um as I mentioned bismar once he had a unified
Germination state with with Prussia firmly in control of that nation state tried to pacify worried neighbors and and calm down this sort of European situation by insisting that he wasn’t interested in expanding on European territory anymore and instead um when about using diplomacy to safeguard um Germany’s position on the continent or
To try and grow German influence in more subtle ways not through conquest or or war and and he called this um real politic right this emphasis on on diplomacy uh William II who who succeeded William the first as Emperor had a very different approach to International politics um this is fed
Politique and he much more brazenly wanted to make Germany a dominant world power not just a dominant European power and this meant competing directly with with the world power was at that time which was Britain and the British Empire and and so he was less uh he was less
Patient with um the sort of diplomatic approaches that bismar had favored and he did his best for example to acquire overseas colonies in ways that bismar had not really been as interested in uh he was less interested in maintaining some of the alliances that bismar had signed with with former enemies former
Um opponents on the battlefield Austria and Germany remained aligned they shared a culture they shared a language less interested in playing nice with France which became a problem less interested in playing nice with Russia which also eventually became a problem because once Germany stepped back from relations with
Those two Powers it left them free to look elsewhere for reassurance especially military reassurance and they looked to Britain and so there’s all these sort of game playing and shifting of alliances that happens really after 1890 that ultimately sort of ratcheted up the tension in Europe and this is
Also a debate that historians have to what extent is Germany primarily responsible for causing World War I right and depending on who you ask you’ll get a very different answer uh Germany’s insistence that that it deserved to be a world power right next to Britain caused all sorts of problems
Because that upset a sort of very delicate balance of power and because Britain really wasn’t interested in making room for another power right so that’s sort of outside of Germany’s borders within German borders the conservatives remain fairly entrenched it’s the system was set up to really benefit them the Liberals are still
Smarting really from 1848 they’re they’re trying to figure out sort of who they are and what they stand for they Splinter actually a bunch of times uh which is also problematic uh if you’re trying to acrew any kind of um foothold in the in the political system
And become strong enough to take on the cons conservatives and then you have the Socialists and and I love the German socialists Because by the eve of World War I they’re the biggest socialist movement on the continent easily uh and they’re often close to or the largest political party in the German Parliament
But again because of the way the system was constructed they’re unable to actually do anything with that clout and so um so you have this this movement that represents an increasingly broad swwa of the German population that can’t really do anything for them and there’s a curious tension in their identity
Between their socialist instincts and their German national identity that really comes out in 1914 when the war starts and they’re expected to sort of get in line with everybody else and support the war effort um German socialists were very uh I wouldn’t say they were they’re pacifists
But they were very anti-war and very anti-imperialism both uh being blamed for like the evils of capitalism right but in 1914 they capitulate and they they do get in line and they do support the war effort for at least the first half of the war to the detriment of that
Movement itself because then it splinters too just like the liberals so you you see within Germany there’s there’s all these tensions that sort of mirror the external tensions um and it weakens those who might be interested in reforming the system which clearly is not there to represent the rights of the
Average German that’s not what that Constitution was I I like making my students read that Constitution they hate it nobody likes reading constitutions they’re really boring the point of the exercise is to understand that not all con constitutions were written with an eye to protecting the rights of citizens this one the 1871
Constitution was very much about determining where power lay and and the obligations that German citizens had towards the state and then it did various other things like it it preserved autonomy for some of the the more powerful smaller kingdoms Bavaria and boten for instance got to retain their own army they got to
Retain control over their rail system they got to have their own Postal Service like sort of really odd bits that that we think wow that’s a strange thing to sort of insert into a constitution but that’s actually how unification was achieved that’s how some of these not quite as powerful as press
Kingdoms and and duchies were persuaded to fall in line behind the Prussian King it in turn suggests that that German national identity might not be as deep or as securely anchored as we might think heading into World War I because of all these Regional loyalties that that persist that you can actually see
In the Constitution itself it’s interesting to me how that contrasts with the popular conception of German nationalism leading up to there where it’s as if I mean if we’re going by today’s dates um you know on the eve of World War I Germany had only what was
The year when we can say Germany kind of constituted itself as a nation state 1871 so thinking of a Nation being fervently nationalist when it’s 43 years old is um quite something for sure for sure as I said Napoleon really got um Germans thinking about what it was to be
German because suddenly there there was there there were French occupation soldiers everywhere so I’m not I’m not arguing there is no such thing as German National ident in by 1914 there was a sense of German national identity I’m simply challenging the idea that all Germans everywhere in Germany knew what
That identity was and and or could agree on what that identity was um even if we look just at language right we we tend to refer to Central Europe pre1 1871 as germane speaking lands right and they did all speak German but they all spoke different dialects of German and
Somebody speaking the deuts of Hamburg would have had a really hard time understanding somebody perhaps speaking some rural dialect of Bavarian German and if you’ve ever been to Germany I can tell you you can hear the difference even if you don’t understand the German these are people that are that sound
Like they’re not quite speaking the same language even though they are so those differences persist into 1914 and and there were much stronger Regional identifications in some ways than you know the sort of State imposed national holidays for example what did sedan day mean was it the same meaning in the Ryan
Land as it was in East Prussia German nationalism I think was really something that took an external presence to fire up and without that external presence it I would argue people sort of back away from Germans sort of back away from it and fall into a more Regional identity
In ways that it maybe as hard for us as as Canadians in 2022 to conceptualize leading into World War I and did the average German citizen or even member of the political class did they expect to win oh absolutely they expected to win they they had won three Wars previously right
Um against Austria uh Denmark and France and they’d been underdogs each time mhm the Russian army as far as anyone knew was in shambles they they couldn’t beat Japan which oh my God that like that was a crisis um the Japanese came out of nowhere really to to win that war in the
Early 20th century and that precipitated a huge crisis in Russia and everyone not just the Germans everyone but the Germans were all told they’d be home by Christmas it would be this would be an easy War uh with with Austria on the same side also fighting um and no one
Really had a good idea of just how brutally the Austrian the Austrian military would perform but there was this firm idea that this was going to be a short war just like the last three Wars and and that Germany would win handily for the the German population and the political and Military classes
What happens to surprise them or undercut their expectations so so what happens really is on the Western Front and there’s no there’s no quick Victory all of a sudden it’s Christmas 1914 and there’s no sign of a breakthrough um for either side the British and the French on on the one
Side and and the Germans on the other then you get into 1915 and there’s still no breakthrough and then it’s 1916 and there’s still no breakthrough and it’s it’s just this it’s almost a slow realization that this is going to be a slog and that there’s no understanding
Of of how to get out of this diplomacy is Unthinkable we came here to win we’re we’re not here to to to sit down at a table and talk about this we’re we’re just going to see this through and it takes four and a half years to see it
Through uh The Experience on the Eastern front for the Germans is very different there’s a clear victory by the end of 1914 and and and even if if we’re going to be really picky as military historians by Spring 1915 Germans are occupying large sections of sort of Western Russia and there’s not
Much fighting although although there’s no real there’s no treaty until uh early 1918 the second surprise which is which is in many ways worse is the nature of the war what so many did not account for was the advances in technology between the 1870s and 1914 and their devastation
Like their there sort of real impact on on bodies like physically um when they’re Unleashed in a in a war environment so the nature of the fighting the sort of psychological trauma of that fighting for those who suffered it and and for those who have to take care of the soldiers who survive
Who go home sometimes in pieces uh sometimes physically sometimes mentally so the the legacy of this war it’s brutality the idea that you could kill easily from a distance that you could kill tens of thousands in a matter of days this is a new kind of warfare that that very very
Few were prepared for that most found because there was no choice they had to in some way adapt to it and and there appeared to be no end year after year um battles like uh the sum for instance the the the significant Battle of 1916 it was a 10-month battle over something
Like five miles of territory um it was a front that stretched from the channel to Switzerland that featured very little movement and no definitive Victory between the end of 1914 and the middle of 1918 and it’s so hard to convey to people now in 2022 what what that meant
For soldiers but also for the countries involved like how do you make sense of this how do you sell this war to your young men who are still getting called up because each year means you need fresh bodies so what is the impact on on Germans it’s horrific it it was bad for
Everybody who was part of this the austrians the the Turks the French the British Germans were fighting on German and French soil mostly French for most of the war so the so the impact on combatants was was one thing if they survived they they they often survived
With serious wounds and and I’m not talking just about physically I’m talking about mentally it was called shell shock but it was an era in which um PTSD was unknown and weakness among men was perceived to be due to the character of the man and not to the
Nature of the trauma and so they were frequently treated as you just have to shrug it off and get back out there can you imagine telling that to somebody today who has PTSD but that was sort of standard treatment um the medical professions sort of figured this out on
The Fly and really they didn’t figure it out until after World War II for civilians left back at home the war was was brutal in different ways um and especially in urban centers so Germany really wasn’t prepared in any way to fight a long War remember I said that
Everyone was told it’ be done by Christmas so there was no long-term planning in in terms of sort of the industrial input into the into the war in terms of food planning and so for German civilians particularly in urban areas the over arching the the the largest memory of the experience of the
War outside of having to deal with family members who were killed or missing or wounded was a lack of food um by 1915 there were food shortage significant food shortages in different parts of Germany there was a ration system that was introduced fairly quickly uh the winter of 196 was called
The turnip winter because that was essentially the only crop that could be found in German markets and so Germans ate turnips for breakfast for lunch for dinner for weeks and I can’t fathom that so if you were in a rural area you were a little bit better off because you had
Access to whatever you could find in the fields or in the forest whatever you could sort of catch or hunt or dig up uh on your own in a city you don’t have that option right so so some had the foresight to try and grow vegetables in
Courtyards or in small gardens next to their homes um some had the foresight to to acquire rabbits and chickens and keep those as food sources but you can only make those last for so long right one of the other catastrophes that visited Germany was an was sort of an an avoidable accident and
It was the idea put forward in early 1915 by by German war planners that pigs were Rivals to for humans in terms of having to be fed and if we if we got rid of our pigs then we’d have all this meat and so there there was a great Pig
Massacre in 1915 in which most of Germany’s pigs were killed um and so and then there was a sudden glut of of sort of pork on the market but I shouldn’t laugh that’s horrible but it well it is horrible whether you’re whether you’re vegetarian or vegan or not like like
That was that that my goodness can you imagine um but the real lack of forite was not just it was not just that pigs maybe were competing with humans where they really or that we need the meat what else do pigs provide that was pretty essential if you are in
Agriculture they’re they’re the basis of fertilizer so killing all of the pigs means you’re going to inevitably run into a shortage of fertilizer because of course the other thing that’s happened as a result of the war um German Imports are non-existent this was this was actually how Britain planned to get
Germany to surrender right um they recognized that Germany was dependent on Imports especially of food and food stuffs and they set up a blockade and that blockade the Germans didn’t pierce it all war um it was a very effective Naval blockade um and so by 1918 especially in major Urban centers and Es
Especially in the capital we could look at Berlin as the example um the food shortages are so severe and have been so systemic so longterm that Berlin is more or less on the verge of civil War it’s crippled by strikes and demonstrations most of the civilians uh
Spend their time standing in in lines for food um there’s widespread discontent the Socialists are no longer entirely on board with the war effort partly for this reason there’s actually a split in the ranks of the Socialists um in 1917 and we have the the the core
Of the later Communist party starts to emerge and there’s Whispers of Revolution and unrest and after February 1917 with the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia those fears start to really ramp up in Germany that that the Socialist movement in Germany which by the way was the largest socialist movement on the continent in
1914 uh that that could uh lead to something similar happening on German soil that could really undermine if not destroy the war effort itself so if if you’re if you’re the military planners of Germany in 1917 you’re really starting to worry about um how this war
Is going to end for your country and then you have the actual uh the the revolution that did happen from 1918 to 1919 in many ways predictable the the German military planners uh who by this point were essentially dictators um Martin kitchen has called them the silent dictatorship uh Hindenburg uh who was
The the the formal head of the the military and his quartermaster General Eric ludendorf who is probably really the brains of the two they’re running Germany the emperor is still there but he’s essentially given they’ve essentially aced power they’re they’re determining who Chancellor and what decisions the chancellor is going to
Make and they’ve decided in 1918 to put everything into one last offensive on the Western Front to try and break the stalemate and the the first part I guess you could call it they’re sort of four waves the first one goes relatively well but they spend all of their all of their
Um energy and the other thing that happens is that the Americans arrive the Americans don’t get involved in the war until uh 1917 formally informally they were uh helping out Britain but American troops start to arrive on European soil in 1918 and Germany cannot hope to keep
Up with with the arrival of of men as fresh as the Americans so really the writings on the wall by the summer of 1918 and German civilians who who have half a brain can see it too so the the end is not far off in coming and
Nonetheless it it it seems shocking when it does come I think most Germans were expecting an Armistice um a truce of some kind sort of like what happens in the East with with with the Russians who who finally formally pull out of the war once the revolution’s Broken Out In fact
The Revolution was caused by the war and sign the Treaty of bratos with the Germans which was hugely punitive and greatly benefited the Germans so I think that they were expecting on the Western Front something similar and that’s not what happens what did happen the military leaders indicate to the
Political leadership that they’ve been running that it’s time to sue for peace and then they sort of conveniently exit stage left and so the signing of the piece is left to the political leadership who then bear the brunt of essentially what’s a lost War the the British and French and
Americans were were going to win if the word continued the were essentially just across German borders and would have invaded so the Armistice meant that there was no formal Invasion but it was very clear to the military that the Germans had lost about the same time there are two revolutions proclaimed in
Berlin on the 9th of November which which the Germans refer to as shik salag the day of German Destiny because on awful lot of really important things happened on November 9th the two revolutions proclaimed different Republic this is before by the way November 11th which is the the end of the war so
Berlin is in complete chaos the the Republic that ultimately wins out is the one that’s sort of given the blessing of of who’s who’s left to deal with military Affairs and who’s coordinating the parliament the the Rival Republic was the Socialist Republic that that was set up by the more radical socialists
Who then go on to become Communists and Berlin essentially is a simmering Civil War uh for the next several months up to a year and a half until the the leaders of that that sort of incipient Communist Party are actually killed in police custody and was that the 1919 kind of
Failed Revolution attempt and that was kind of the start of the the Schism between the social Democrats and the Communists yes absolutely there was no sort of going back to to being friendly with each other after that um it it got so bad that the politicians charged with
Writing the constitution for the new Republic because the the emperor had to abdicate this was part of the Republic being proclaimed and and the Armistice being uh being figured out the the politicians charged with writing a new constitution for this new Republic had to leave Berlin because the fighting was
So bad they feared for their lives where did they Retreat to to WR right the Constitution to the city of viar which has an illustrious history in terms of culture and in terms of figures like G uh so there was real symbolism in choosing vimer as the city to write this
New Constitution and and that’s where the the era that follows gets its name and where the Constitution gets its name it’s sometimes just called the 19 uh 1919 Constitution but most historians will refer to is the viar Constitution because it was written in viar and that
Brings us to I guess the viar years yes finally so uh interwar Germany is I think of of Fascination to to many um because I think think it’s this interesting best of times worst of times dichotomy within the era you know it’s both a cautionary tale of what happens
When you know the word we might use now is polarization hits an extreme where Society has no I think just to paraphrase um vites it’s a society that is seen as lacking a consensus for how to move forward yes um well simultaneously it’s seen as this almost Golden Era full of cultural
Accomplishments and achievements and you know the almost um it’s often seen as the burst for for example uh modern ideas of LGBT identity and and uh and trans rights yeah that’s what it’s seen as how do we reconcile those two things sure if even do we even want
To I mean they they exist in Tandem and intention with each other it’s because of that lack of consens ensus politically I think that you get such startling um developments in the in the Arts and and um in society youve you have such broad capacity to experiment
In so many ways because there’s no consensus on what the rules are um so I don’t think you I think that’s the I think that’s the resolution actually um that they belong next to each other that that they can’t exist one without the other let’s quickly touch upon this
Circumstances that led to the situation right cuz it’s we’re finally in the era of a republic right there’s there’s no Monarch technically I know well he’s around he’s just I think he’s in the Netherlands if I yeah recall in Exile in Exile yeah well so you so you have the
Power vacuum really that’s created by the absence of traditional leadership as Germans knew it and in its place you have a a republic uh and parliamentary democracy not a constitutional monarchy and so it’s not this is not to say that Germans had no experience with democracy
They they certainly did um we call it a constitutional monarchy before 1918 but there were still elections there’s still political parties technically so is Canada exactly right yeah so when you that’s a that’s a really good analogy to draw and so it’s tempting to think of Germans as
Inexperienced with with the practice of democracy in the viar era and that that somehow explains what eventually happens but I don’t think it explains anything I I think actually they knew how to vote they knew what um engaged politics was they by all accounts um Margaret
Anderson has done a lot of research into this uh they voted enthusiastically they participated in democracy and so in what’s changed instead is is the nature of the political structure the idea that political parties and politicians now were in char charge and there was no single figure who was going to be making
All of the important decisions uh so move away from authoritarianism if you will and perhaps it was this that Germans were had less experience with uh and certainly German politicians had trouble finding consensus there’s that word again about how to fill that power vacuum and so the new structure had
Still had a Chancellor and had a president in place of a monarch um and the president was elected but but on sort of an off cycle and so there were there was a different system of checks and balances there was a an article written into the new Constitution that was meant
To you know that was very much a product of that chaos at the end of the war that we discussed where it was felt that if Civil War threatens if Revolution threatens to sort of undermine everything there has to be a way for us to make decisions quickly without sort
Of committee right without sort of sitting around the table to discuss it and so that was written into article 48 of the Constitution which in a crisis situation gave the president the power to sort of get around a a lot of the checks and balances that the constitution otherwise had and make very
Quick decisions about how to deal with with an emergency so I’m I’m bringing this up for important reasons later on MH otherwise the parliament uh the Reich stag which is both the physical building where the parliament met as well as the name that the parliament the the group
Of politicians had uh the Reich dog during the viar Republic the year of the viar Republic was largely an exercise in how to figure out or how to sort out political power sharing for the first time because while it had existed prior to 1914 it its power was largely over
The budget and that was it and all of a sudden there are decisions to be made about um implementing the Constitution uh what to do with the Treaty of Versailles which we haven’t even discussed yet um what to do with um Federal versus state level legislation
And power sharing uh and so on and so forth and the the Treaty of Versailles comes really quickly after the the viar Constitution is is written and accepted and the Treaty of Versailles sort of casts a long Shadow over the viar Republic and I would argue that if if
Anything made it more likely that this that this experiment that we call the viar Republic was going to fail it was not so much the political structure that the constitution helped put in place it was the Treaty of Versailles was it the kind of punitive nature of it maybe or
It it was partly the punitive nature although really the Germans should have expected this and and they could have looked at their own treatment of the Russians with the Treaty of bratos if you put those two side by side that bratos is as hard harsh as if not
Harsher than the Treaty of versa so there was there was shock and dismay and consternation and real resentment over the Treaty of Versailles o over the terms that it had in it it Whitted down the Army to 100,000 men it completely abolished the the Air Force it stripped
Germany of all of its overseas possessions so no more overseas Empire and it carved huge chunks of German territory out of Germany proper and it separated East Prussia for for instance from the rest of Germany because of the um construction of the the so-called polish Corridor by the way Poland is
Reconstituted right for the first time in I think 200 over 200 years which meant that huge pieces of Prussia were taken away from Germany which you know formerly belonged to an independent Poland so all of that was bad enough perhaps not surprising given the way that that treaties tended to be
Written by Victorious European powers what really sort of stung what Germans had a hard time accepting was Clause 231 the so-called war guilt clause mhm and I I tell my students that I blame the Allies as much as I blame the Germans for this part of of of History what
Article 231 did was it assigned responsibility for the war to Germany and its allies for causing the war and it was meant to justify the reparations that were demanded um so it certain amount of money and a certain amount of goods that had to be paid particularly
To France but to all of the Allied countries who had suffered the Germans really resented the idea that they that they were primarily responsible for this war but the the translation of the Clause was also problematic because Germans understood it to assign sole responsibility and they really bridled
At this like we were one of several people who made this war it takes to it takes to to sort of Tango right and the Allies were aware that this there was this common sort of Miss conception of what that article was and didn’t do anything to correct the
Misconception um the austrians had a similar clause in their treaty uh I don’t think the hungarians did they had a they had a sort of separate setup um but they were by no means the only Central Power the only losing power that was that was made to uh accept
Responsibility for the war so when you have the kind of deep resentment stirred up by this treaty that was forced upon the Germans in the aftermath of the war a war that it wasn’t clear to many Germans they’ actually lost because there had been no Invasion a war that
They’re very quickly told by the end of 1918 even during the chaos that that reigned over Berlin I I think it’s Hindenburg makes mention of this they’re they’re told that the carpet was pulled out from under them by the civilian leadership at home who had signed this Armistice even though in fact Hindenberg
And ludendorf had instructed them to it’s a recipe for disaster like it’s this refusal this obstinate refusal by a majority of the German population to accept this treaty is just going to Fester long term and the politicians that are in charge of the viar Republic are by and large not interested in
Trying to make them feel better about it because they hate it as much as the next German right so talk about an opportunity to to Really cultivate and and enhance a sense of national identity but it’s ground founded in this idea of of victimhood of misplaced blame it’s a
Very negative conception of identity but it but it really sort of resonates with a lot of Germans who had horrible miserable experiences of the war and now have horrible miserable experiences of the postwar period it isn’t just the politics within Germany and some sort of part of the you know German National
Character that’s the right you know in Big Air quotes again uh it’s a certain set of geopolitical circumstances that uh in many ways um pressed down upon you know the German population at that time and as you as you say caused misplaced blame we we have those political forces and you know
Throughout the viar era you have no shortage of political violence kind of uh thinking a little detour into the say um experience of someone you say a particularly Cosmopolitan person in Berlin yeah during this era um what would they uh especially someone in the Arts you know might may or not be
Related to the S of podcast uh what would that experience have been like so so Cosmopolitan Germany really what you’re talking about is Berlin M uh there’s no City like Berlin It cast itself as and tried to be and was understood to be a world city on the
Same level as Paris or London even before World War I in terms of its Cosmopolitan and its uh its dedication to the Arts and it’s its fervor in trying to attract tourists um both from around Germany but also from around the world so what happens under viar the
Experience of the war in Germany meant that among other things to support the war effort everyone had to be pulled into line censorship was a very real thing and it was very rigid and very top down and it was particularly heavy felt in urban areas obviously and and in the
Arts um where obviously freedom of expression was was highly Ur rised and and much sought after so with the institution of a fledgling Republic whose attention was often elsewhere censorship was lifted completely and there was this this very real sense of sudden Freedom literally where you couldn’t tell where the edges were and
So berliners uh took that and R with it it had always as I said because of its status as a world city pre1 1914 it it had always tended in this direction and out side of Berlin Germans sort of viewed their Capital with I think you know depending on their background
Obviously but some degree of skepticism like this is this is not a um this is not a good example of true true upright German um you know there’s all sorts of suspicious sketchy things that happen in the capital city kind of thing and um to some extent that attitude continues into
The postwar post 1918 period but if if you’re an artist that’s from anywhere in Europe Berlin is is probably the most exciting place to be precisely because of the absence of Regulation um so for instance the Cabaret culture which predates World War I flourishes between 1918 and 1933 and
By Cabaret I mean live music I mean um entertainment live entertainment uh singing and dancing audience interaction with the performers on the stage uh you have a very vibrant gay subculture a very open one that you couldn’t necessarily live out elsewhere in in Germany including in other urban areas
That that would have been very sort of obviously problematic but in Berlin anything went uh it wasn’t policed at all even if officially homosexuality remained criminalized according to the VR Constitution which carried over some of the 1871 Constitution and so it had been a a criminal ense particularly for
Men um from 1871 my understanding that was uh relatively unenforced after the viar Republic was founded you have films like um Richard oswal’s different from the others where you have a depiction of an actual homosexual relationship on screen yes yeah shocking and and but exciting
And I I think those are two words that really go together with Berlin like the VIS the the visual cult culture that comes out of Berlin in this era shocking and exciting sort of go together a lot at this time it’s sort of shock entertainment it it quickly became known
Uh really globally that Berlin was a good place to go for illicit whatever your hedonistic Tendencies ran to you could probably find it satisfied in Berlin between 1919 and 1933 did this have something to do perhaps as a whole with um the kind of popular especially external attitude
Towards viar that persists the day that it was a uniquely decadent you know culture especially viar Berlin um because that’s something that I mean that was the first you have you ever seen the show Babylon Berlin that show is basically about how decadent that culture is and and uh I found it
Interesting because it obviously explicitly departs from reality in lots of ways yeah ites um it absolutely even an am like me I’m like oh this isn’t quite right but um it almost feeds into this think I mean to to my to my understanding um something of a myth
That it was this wildly decadent you know like unsustainable Society in Big Air quotes this is a postwar atmosphere and so to some extent in urban centers across Western Europe you there is this giddy relief and celebration that the war is finally over uh and so it’s not just happening in in
Berlin in that sense that that atmosphere that sort of um catapults some of this effervescence and and cultural and artistic celebration in into the heights that it achieves but Berlin is different from London and Paris in that you know it’s it’s a city that’s literally emerging from from Bloodshed in the streets and
And Revolution and near Civil War in some in some areas actual Civil War and and so the idea that there’s there are no boundaries for the moment maybe tomorrow there’ll be boundaries but today there no boundaries that’s really specific I think to Berlin like you don’t even find it in Hamburg or Munich
Or or nurburg some of these other larger Urban centers in in Germany um it’s the capital like it’s it’s also the seat of government so there’s a sense that things are really going on here and it’s the the head of the new German Republic
So so really the focus not just of um of Europe but of our entire country uh there’s there’s a lot of sort of importance and self-importance but so too again because they were the ner Center during the War years and those pressures are now absent that willingness to experiment and to see how
Far we can get before we find push back it’s not just happening obviously in the visual arts although that’s certainly the most exciting you see um women and and like-minded reformers organizing around the issue of abortion for example um which also was illegal according to the new constitution remains illegal
Until until um well we get into post 45 period um there was an amendment passed in 26 that allowed abortion in in certain circumstances usually the life of the mother was Gravely endangered which was seen at that time as really Progressive and cutting edge of course
We would see it as as quite very very small steps forward right uh and the reformers themselves were disappointed in 26 because it was so restrictive but you also had um the idea that you know the reason that abortion was so important was because women were were increasingly out in public in the
Workforce having independent lives in ways that hadn’t existed before the war and that was largely because of the war the in the absence of men women especially young women had been required to take jobs and they weren’t necessarily willing to give up that that freedom and that Financial Security when
The men returned in 1918 um so there’s a real Earnest and fiery conversation happening basically throughout the viar Republic about gender roles um not just with an eye to the gay subculture that I’ve mentioned and to trans rights and the ideas around same-sex couples but also towards like
What should a woman be expected to do what should a man’s sphere be you had mentioned I think before we got started crossdressing um sort of takes off maybe as the wrong way to put it because it implies it hadn’t been around before and it it had it’s got antecedence in the
19th century but it becomes much more widespread in urban areas especially in Berlin where you have women you know not necessarily dressing as and trying to pass as men but just want the freedom to wear pants to wear trousers um which horrified conservatives right like like
These are women trying to be men and this is going to upset our our traditional conception of balanced gender roles separate separate but equal spheres right where women uh should be concentrating on having children and building a family unit and if they’re out having uh out in public holding jobs
Dressing like men cutting their hair short smoking wearing lots of makeup this is not what we want our women to be doing and of course uh the other fear the other concern that’s really driving a lot of these an anxieties which is again not specific to Germany but
Germany gets a lot of the attention is a falling birth rate Just Happening happening everywhere in the industrialized world has to do with education has to do with access to um not so much to contraception but to increased knowledge about avoiding pregnancy as a woman a falling birth
Rate means that the future of your people might be in Jeopardy because you’re not producing enough to really sustain it right and if we give our if we give our women the freedom to decide whether or not they want to start families or to question their gender
Where are we going to end up in 20 30 40 years we’re certainly not going to correct the current problem of a falling a declining birth rate or so the thinking goes if you’re a conservative German who’s really worried about the future of your people in the aftermath
Of this devastating war that seemingly killed off an entire generation of young men and so you have this interesting uh kind of liberalization that is instigating the coming backlash yes there’s that polarization right exactly the coming of the Republic which is seen as this great political change that is
Surely going to affect um Power structures not just politically but also socially actually doesn’t change all that much and those who suffered the most during the war will continue to suffer the most during the viar era largely because they lack this this deeper more established cushion to fall
Back on that um you know the sort of industrialists that class of people or that the nobles with Deep Pockets might still have that that they can sort of still play with and depend on uh and you see this released Darkly in 1923 which was the height of
Hyperinflation in in Germany and it this has a lot to do with um the currency that was introduced and the new economic um situation that the the end of the war ushered in and the tensions between Germany and France that played out in in the rur area of West Germany that led to
A decision to embark on a general strike which then exacerbated some some really sort of horrific conditions already playing out where German money essentially became worthless and by November 1923 you can you can look this up or find images online it was more cost effective to use bricks of paper
Money to light fires than it was to use that money to buy bread because it was just so like catastrophically out of control so the the savings of middle class and workingclass Germans who had just recovered maybe from the impact of World War I were wiped
Out and and and then you see again that polarization between those who may or may not have felt that and those who feel increasingly increasingly like by the way by 23 they’ve had at least four changes of government none of the politicians who are in charge of making
Decisions now seem to know what they’re doing they’re not helping me my voice is not being heard is perhaps the 2022 version of this right and and so it’ll take a little while still but you see the extremist political parties appearing in the fringes and they’re there’s still very Fringe movements at
This point um not really getting a lot of attention nationally certainly um but they’re there and they’re they’re pulling on threads like the Treaty of Versailles was a terrible idea and we’ll get rid of it the Republic is a bad idea it’s not doing anything and and we’ll
Get rid of it we’ve we’ve got ideas about how to do this um those who are responsible for your current misery Jews Catholics Catholics are never to be trusted they’re the minority Christian religion in in Germany socialists who by and large are part of every government at this point because they’re the most
Stable political party even with the the Communist having founded their own party these are the three people that we should blame for the end of the war and for the current misery in the first part of the viar Republic and they choose these groups also because going back to
1918 and the signing of the arms they had been representatives from um the the political parties that took power which included the Socialists and the center party which was a a religious Catholic religious political party and there had been some very prominent German politicians who happened to be Jews that
Were also part of this so those three will surface again and again in the rhetoric especially of far right what we would call far right Ultra right-wing political parties like Nazis will Point their fingers at these three um sort of stereotypical enemies of Germany throughout this period it strikes me
That um because it’s relevant to earn lit’s uh experience as a Russian German Jew yeah during this time it was both a time of great access to Society for someone who’s Jewish like ear I mean prior to World War II and earlier um uh his access and you know his kind of you
Know ancestors access to Civil Society was very limited and legally um and during the viar era it was in many ways more open than ever which was part of what allowed him to become one of the most prominent artists of his generation in a very short amount of time and yet
There is a kind of growing violence to the anti-Semitism I’m curious as to what you know an experience of someone who Jewish as a part of society would have been in this in this in this period um was the danger their presently for for example an average uh Jewish person living in
Berlin and I should also note that they were a tiny minority they were yes they were it’s uh that’s such a good question um and it’s so hard to answer it succinctly yeah we’re in my seminar right now um we’re going to spend basically two two meetings discussing
This so six hours um but I let’s try and do it sort of in brief let’s start with Jews in Germany after World War I so by and large so Germany’s uh Jewish population at this point is less than 1% of its total population it’s it’s about
500,000 and the population is 60 million somewhere in there most of the German Jewish Community was highly assimilated they spoke German and went to German schools and participated in German Society fully weren’t tra particularly traditionall looking in an outward appearance and and identified as German as well as Jewish um but
Increasingly did not practice their religion some obviously there was still synagogue goers and and and Jews that that would have had an identity based more in faith than than not the amount of um Jewish and Christian intermarriages was huge at this point much bigger than it had been prior to
World War I religious communities tended to to stay within their own communities and this includes in Germany anyways um Protestant Catholic inter marriage there wasn’t a lot of that at all like it was heavily discouraged on both sides and and we’re talking about the same sort of Faith practice right except that we’re
Not in 1920s uh 1910s 1900s Germany there they were really distinct subcultures and Catholics were understood to be by the Protestants to be problematic because their loyal loyalty was ultimately to the pope who was in the mount over the mountains in Rome so this this is where we got get
The word Ultram montine which has this sort of sinister ring to it like they’re not real Germans because they can’t be loyal ultimately to to the state and to the idea of Germany and and Catholics of course looked at Protestants as this sort of um heretical Breakaway people
Who precisely didn’t pay attention to the edicts coming out of Rome and from the the true head of the church on Earth and and so there was not a lot of um compromise or attempt to sort of discuss or conciliate with each other uh and Jews were even further removed obviously
These were uh understood to be a people without estate they lived in diaspora um they had rejected Christ who came to save them and so you know these are the roots of of anti- Juda ISM and anti-Semitism right they they either should be forced to convert or not live
Among us you know in in hard times when when violence when the solution to tensions between the two communities broke down into violence um so so what’s happening in in 1920s Berlin German Jews participated in the war served in the in the Army like all like all Germans did
German Jews tended to be more in urban spaces were were sort of more highly represented in certain populations uh largely because of circumstances prior to their emancipation there were only certain occupations they could hold for instance and this went back centuries really and this of course gave rise to conspiracies
About Jewish worldwide plots to dominate Christians right sort of what I would call Standard anti-semitic motifs a lot of it fueled by this real hostility towards and fear of difference that’s rooted in religion although by the 20th century they’re increasingly interested to be a racial group right there’s
Something in their blood that makes them different um it’s not simply a question of conversion anymore we’re but that’s sort of creeping in slowly we’re not quite fully there so somebody like lubit wandering around in in 1922 Berlin I mean there’s a lot of violence and and
Some of it’s aimed at Jewish politicians falter ATO for instance one of the most prominent examples of a politician who was assassinated he was also Jewish um for his role in in the end of World War I but Jews are not really singled out at
This point not even at the end of the 20s when you when you have much more common sort of Nazi instigated violence it’s they’re more likely to go after Communists than they are after Jews now it it also happened that a lot of German Communists were
Jewish but there were also a lot of German Communists who were not Jewish so so while you you know you you pointed us towards violence that’s bubbling up and and being geared towards the the Jewish community of Germany I I would actually say that doesn’t really start in Earnest
Until the 30s um the violence of the 20s and early 30s is much less coherent it’s a lot more spontaneous and and often it’s more politically oriented then then sort of racially oriented or motivated and it and it’s really who the not are concerned with are are not so much the
Racial enemy that their propaganda keeps talking about that Hitler keeps harping on about but it it’s the Communists and I mean in Hitler’s head Communists and Jews were synonymous but realistically speaking in in the 1920s it the Communist threat was much more um something that Germans responded to and
Were scared of based on the example of bolshevism and they didn’t necessarily equate that with with Jews that they may or may not have known who lived down the street and and ran the store on the corner kind of thing so something we haven’t really talked about is Cinema uh
During the viar era I I always take care to tell my students when we start on that topic I usually show them Metropolis um as sort of one of the the best examples of viart era Cinema well you know the kind of famous apocryphal story about Fritz long where he you know
He was offered the job the head of Ufa I believe um by Geral personally according this is all according to long and then he left on the train the next night but you know it’s exactly probably partially apocryphal yeah no I’m not sure but very
To me it’s very much a case of like it’s it’s an ecstatic truth it’s a print the legend case exactly exactly I think there’s a deeper truth there about the urgency of German non authoritarian filmmakers to leave yeah well that because that’s the other thing that happens um with that especially
Artists who were sensitive to political currence you could see that coming if you paid attention to Nazism and so it so you know lubich leaves earlier and and I wouldn’t say he’s leaving because of the threat of Nazism which in the in 1924 Hitler’s in jail the Nazi party has been disbanded and
It’s really the the pieces are scattered across Germany even like even across the world because R leaves leaves Europe entirely and goes to South America for a while and and from 24 to 28 you have this beautiful period of stability largely due to uh Gustav stran who had
Been Chancellor very briefly and then became foreign minister and he essentially settles the economy down after that period of hyperinflation and he negotiates some very important alliances with some of Germany’s neighbors and returns Germany to good standing in that community of European nation states and um all of a sudden
Everything sort of starts to settle at least in comparison to what came before and then what came next and and what comes next so really what what comes next is the Great Depression which begins in the US but is immediately and horrifically felt in Germany because of the Treaty of
Versailles and the way that the reparations have been organized that Germany must pay but they’re entirely dependent on American credit for that which disappears overnight and so once again you have huge swaths of the German population in significant crisis for primarily economic reasons and you have a parliament of Reich Doug who again
Like the the viim Republic had 15 chancellors 14 chancellors in 15 years so there’s absolutely no political stability and by 1930 there’s no faith that any of those parties can figure it out because they’ve had by 1930 they’ve had 11 years to figure this out and they
Haven’t yet so so social Democrats the center um party politicians the Liberals the conservatives all of these recognizable parties with track records of failure aren’t an option anymore and so who gets the attention it’s The Fringe parties right the formerly Fringe parties which are now just seen as the end of the spectrum
Parties you have the Communists on the left and the Nazis on the right and nobody really likes the Communists there Everybody’s scared about what’s going on in in the Soviet Union now in in Bolshevik Soviet Union uh where they seem to be killing people wantedly and they’ve repressed religion entirely and
Who knows what else is going on there um and then you’ve got the Nazis and all they talk about are are conservative values kicking out the Communists killing them if necessary and kicking out the Jews and so as an artist what’s what are you going to take from that and
So you start to see this this um wave of immigration uh that begins really I think with with artists who are the most sensitive to the ramifications of that kind of message even before the Nazis come to power where it seems clear I think to really sort of farsighted
Individuals that this is going to get worse before it can get better I think it’s worth um underlining too that it wasn’t some coded thing the anti-Semitism with the Nazi party before they came into power it was no it was the text um and I think that often gets
Lost in yes in the shuffle it was a key part of their values it’s Inseparable from that it wasn’t some incidental thing for a greater purpose or whatever it was it was the end goal yeah no it um Hitler’s prison book text you know what happens to you when you try your hand
Revolution and you fail and you’re thrown into jail well you sit you write your Manifesto um he wasn’t the only one who did this but he’s one of the most famous and and so M com my struggle is all about the Jew as existential threat
To German um to gerom and so they the Nazis figure out after their their failed attempt at revolution in 1923 uh which which they tried to overthrow the government in Munich and they failed and he ended up in jail realized that we can’t do this violently we’re going to
Have to do it through the system and so we’ll get elected we’ll get appointed the right way and then we’ll take the system apart from within and that’s exactly what they do but they also figure out in 1930 that that violent anti-Semitism is actually not going to
Get them any votes it it’s not a draw to the German people um so it’s they don’t get rid of it they just don’t talk about it as much and so that anti-semitic rhetoric that was really present in the early 20s is toned down quite a bit for
For their return to the sort of national political scene in the early 30s and once Hitler achieves that position of power which he gets by you know essentially winning the election of July 32 and forcing the conservative powers that be to work with the Nazi party and and getting appointed Chancellor uh for
January 33 that’s when he sort of returns to form and starts to talk more about Jews as enemy although again he does it primarily in the first year or so in the language of anti-communism and in fact the Communists are the first group that they attack in February of 33
In the wake of the Reich stag fire so but by then I think Jews who were likely to leave Germany based on the the perceived threat of Nazism you needed the means to do so because anti-Semitism is not specific to Germany and there were only so many places you could go as
A Jew legally uh especially if you didn’t have money and and Canada wasn’t one of them Canada was not a destination that was letting in Jews if you had the means and could leave you you probably left in that very early period uh Jewish immigration out of Germany um between 33
And 38 I would describe as kind of a a trickle every now and then there’s a bit of a burst but there’s there’s not a lot like it’s though that 500,000 strong Jewish Community doesn’t vanish by 39 in fact more than half of the community is
Still there when World War II breaks out and was that largely because of how difficult it became to leave yeah so it was it was always difficult for for Jews to leave to try and find better circumstances for themselves the majority of European Jews lived uh pre
In 1919 either in Russia or in Poland Poland had the biggest the biggest Jewish community of of Europe at that time and they tended to flee West and so transited through Germany didn’t necessarily stay this is where I remember how I said uh when we started talking about luich I described
Germany’s Jewish Community is largely assimilated um Jews coming from Eastern Europe were not they tended to be much more traditional more Orthodox and so had distinct and obvious differences in culture in language and even physical appearance they married well with Nazi anti-Semitism Nazi anti-semitic rhetoric who tended to emphasize these
Differences physical characteristics and behaviors that were you know um incompatible with with Christian German ways of living they were much more thinking about these uden these East European Jews than they were thinking about highly assimilated German Jews right M they tended to be much poorer didn’t have the means necessarily to go
To go you know beyond where they could walk um so the idea of getting on onto a a ship that would sail you know to somewhere in the Americas was really Out Of Reach For A lot of these a lot of these Jewish families um and then by
1930 the by the later 1930s the Nazis were only allowing Jews to leave if they could pay a tax and so countries who perhaps had set quotas for Jewish immigrants um prior to 39 were it’s far less likely to let in penniless Jews than they were to to let in you know
Jews Jews period um not much has changed I would say in the 21st century where I think um countries are still very reticent or very nervous about letting in refugees who don’t have any money uh we heard a lot of this um sort of anxiety around the idea of letting in
Refugees from you know War torn areas of the Middle East are they going to bring our economy down are they going to be add so this was a sort of language that was prevalent in the 30s um that circled around um pennil Jews of course Nazi Germany made them penniless by by
Stripping them of their wealth and and really that sort of plunder that opportunistic plunder went hand in hand with discrimination and other forms of mistreatment and then the war when it broke out made immigration basically impossible and um it’s actually for particularly me being an amateur but particularly uh I think compelling
Following recounting of this is in Victor cler’s Diaries which I’m was one of the most powerful text I’ve ever read about this um and it’s it’s interesting um as a little sidebar that um when lubich moved to America um he was actually the subject of a significant I
Would say icy reception um in that there was even organized demonstrations uh against him when he landed not because he was Jewish but because he was German they didn’t want this uh basically you know bigname German director coming in because large speak grudges from World War I exactly Germans are the enemy you
Wonder if the other the other German immigrates had similar experiences when they first came over and how they navigated that even during World War II um because I remember I mean Marlene Dietrich who is another very famous example of a yeah a German a German artist who who fled actually she fled
The Nazis I think she left in 30 and not because she was Jewish because she just refused to to live in that kind of a a society she was very present for American soldiers during World War II like she supported them by by going on putting going out and putting on shows
For them and I wonder if she got any Flack for being German herself it’s it’s interesting how common that was among um even the Jus in the film industry like people like Sig ruman who um actually he was a another um German immigrant he was an actor um
Acted in I believe three or four new pitch films um he did active yeah wartime work on the on behalf of the Americans um and you had other German directors making uh or formerly German directors uh in terms of citizenship um making propaganda films that’s right for
The Americans so um I I think uh L in some ways broke some seals on that because you had this I mean you have people like mow long Von Sternberg ohon Sternberg yeah Peter Lori um Billy Wilder y was another big name at this time became the bitch’s kind of one of
His two key disciples pringer another one yeah no it’s a it’s a veritable who’s who like if you if you go through prominent Hollywood directors and actors in in the late 30s and early 40s it’s it’s kind of astonishing really the proportion that came out of Central
Europe shall we say you know this all is of particular interest I think to listeners to this podcast hello um because um so much of lish’s work made within Germany Germany and later in in the US is informed by this experience um you know not only the obvious film like
1942 used to be or not to be um but films like cloney brown which is partially about uh the Immigrant experience uh at least in the LA very last scene films uh like nka which’s ideas of kind of um you know human connection transcend International politics and also the way that he um
Glommed on to basically American style capitalism so fully um he felt completely at home in that system in a way that he never did and um he famously said um I prefer the par Paris in the Paramount law to the real Paris because almost all of his films were set in
Europe uh and all lot of them in this romanticized prear or interwar era um in Noka starts with a title card that explicitly states that yes this film happened before 1939 so uh so much of his his attitudes towards you know even geopolitics to culture are so rooted in this experience
That he had in war time and interwar Germany Germany obviously had capitalist structures it was a capitalist economy that wasn’t nearly as powerful as the American economy for for various reasons although it certainly tried very hard um but there was there was something about American culture I think that once
That initial icy reception wore off my sense was that most artists in any case found found ways to to make homes for themselves oh yes fairly comfortably intellectuals maybe not so much like I think I can think of academics Jewish German Jewish academics who came to the
United States and it it really was temporary and and always understood to be temporary um teodor Doro is the is the most um prominent example who uh was one of the founders of the um the Frankfurt School and and he went back to Germany when he could bre might be the
One anomaly because he doesn’t stay in the US right no he comes over and Bre was he was Jewish but he was also very commun like he was very very socialist um socialist minded and so that American System I don’t think he I don’t think he
Found a home in it and so he goes back to um not just to Germany but to East Germany right interesting yeah when he can yeah it’s interesting you hear kind of accounts from people like Billy Wilder and given Gro Marx of a sort of a disent with postwar Germany um I mean
Marx famously danced on Hitler’s grave and then never came back that’s your that’s the story I’m not sure how true that is but uh you said something that provoked something in my head that I want to touch upon in regards to luich with luich especially um you know in 19
23 24 he’s given an icy reception and by 1934 he’s the head of Paramount right he’s the only director I believe in Hollywood history to ever actually head up a studio for only a couple years it didn’t it wasn’t a great marriage but that 10 years you know it’s
As astronomical as any rise of any artist American impressive film is there is there any stone that we haven’t turned yet that we should turn I wonder perhap perhaps only to to add that our our understanding of the viar Republic is this era of cultural almost frenetic activity like feverish
Output in some ways is colored by what came after the N because the Nazis shut so much of it down so quickly i’ I’ve I’ve I almost compare it to this like myth of like the partying on the Titanic as it was sinking or something you know
This idea you know this everyone knows that they’re doomed and it’s going to you know might as well party while we can you know exactly and and so not to detract from what it from what it was and and obviously there was so much of that that was real just a sort of
Cautionary note that perhaps it looks brighter in hindsight knowing the dark chapters that that shut it down if if temporarily um you know and the the example I used for my students is is the new woman she was called the new woman this this stereotype this archetyp type
Of of this dangerous sort of young women who defi gender Norms um to what extent did she really exist there was so much anxiety around her that we want to I think as students believe she that you know that all young German women were drawn to this model and wanted to be
This model and I’m not sure actually that she was as present or as ubiquitous as as perhaps we would like to think like we want all young women to be defying sort of conservative norms and finding space to create their own identities and in reality I don’t think
A lot of young German women were actually doing that it was more the idea that they could yeah that’s important and that right precisely the Nazis take away um because they they return us to they return Germany to sort of very rigid understandings of of gender norms
And and really not much string from that even if they did you know homosexuality continue to be criminalized but they really turned the other way when members of their own movement engaged in that sort of activity or held to that kind of identity and and really
There were an awful lot of active gay men in the third W that that we don’t know much about that the Nazis kind of you know 50,000 gay men ended up in concentration camps and I think 5,000 were convicted um and and and sort of held for longer terms but there were far
More than that that were just kind of left alone as long as you’re you’re not parading down you know under Den Lyon and Berlin the way you could have during the viar Republic so there’s I don’t know a sort of enclosing a desire to remember that that the viar era you know glows
Brightly because the third right was so dark it’s not often that we have such a contrast like an obvious famous inviting comparison contrast where you can go oh that’s the way it was overnight seemingly that’s the way it is now yeah it’s almost dizzying especially for the Germans who were
Involved right I there are I would be remiss not to mention there are two books sitting on the table that we are sharing right now that you brought and I’d like you to introduce both because one of them uh is was actually a major source for my research for this podcast
And I was relieved to see it because I was like oh am I going to make an ass of myself with this you know uh like a pop history book um but I’d like you to introduce both of the books sure um so one is called vimer Germany promise and tragedy
By uh historian Eric D vites and it’s my go-to text uh for for teaching the history of the Vima Republic um but es especially for its focus on the Arts on on society and culture so there there is a chronological narrative about the political history of the Republic but
Vites really is in his intentions are to highlight the evolution of various movements and and products in artistic and social societal spheres so there’s a great deal about architecture and there’s a great deal there’s there’s entire chapters on the incipient film industry in in Germany um there’s a an
Entire chapter on sex and bodies right and and sort of the medical aspect and the political fights around things like contraception and abortion so it’s big and and somewhat scary for that reason a few thick yeah it is it’s but it’s very readable my students have said I I
Paired it with another book that was half the size and much denser and less enjoyable so they really like this one the bigger heavier book I should say um is Mom’s exhibition catalog for German expressionism the graphic impulse which I think was oh I’m going to date myself
I think it was 20 years ago that they beheld it and just to interject myself Momo stands for a Museum of Modern Art in New York in New York sorry should have made that clear um but it’s it’s like my Bible of the movement German expressionism which in fact starts at
The end of the 19th century but really sort of comes into its own and and does all sorts of interesting Divergent radical unexpected exciting things during the viim Republic and it you know it shoots off into into surrealism and then it has important ties to the the
New objectivity Deno Sak Kate it’s and into bow house and things like that and so just for the images of because historians too get tired of text and and don’t mind looking at pictures I I bring it to show my students like if you want a visual understanding of what
The viar Republic was it’s a really good place to start um but actually there’s a third book I didn’t bring that I should have that I really want to highlight to you and to your your readers and it’s a a slender book called what I
Saw by ysph rot or if if if you want me to anglicize it Joseph Roth and Ral was a u an austrian-born Jew who immigrated to Germany and ended up in Berlin during the war and and I think the first couple of years of the post-war Period 1919
1920 and then he sort of flits around Western Europe doesn’t really stay in Berlin but Returns on occasion but he wrote he was a journalist um he wrote for a number of German newspapers what I saw is a collection of his reports from the capital city during the viar Republic and it covers
Everything from the construction of infrastructure to theater to neighborhoods in Berlin to The Impressions that Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe make and it’s it is so colorful there are no photos there are no images the ideas you get about what vimer era Berlin was are so poignantly and painstakingly rendered and it’s it’s
Just so subjective it’s one person’s impression of a capital city in a time of great flux like what’s there not to like about that uh you don’t have to agree with everything but but man he had his opinions and and he shared them sort of quite willingly so I highly recommend
That oh that’s wonderful um as far as one book I’ve been referring to occasionally is um uh Richard evans’s uh coming of the Third Reich which is a narrative history um of uh Germany it’s mostly between again 1840 is uh it starts with he has the question about
Starting with bismar but he really does start with kindy Napoleon and goes all the way up to February 1933 um I found it powerful in the mental exercises that Evans throws in and these are just they’re not literal exercises they’re kind of embedded in the text um to kind of um encourage you
To see history in a different way than you had before yes so um one particularly memorable passage was when he invites you the reader to consider how um if if you were you know to time travel to turn of the 20th century and ask someone out of the Western European
You know kind of the you know what you might call you know culturally uh sophisticated in Big Air quotes countries which would um descend by mid-century into uh you know a menagerie of violence a sufficiently educated person might have picked France yes um and that’s just one example of many but
There are so many moments like that in book where I genuinely um it completely changed how I saw the causal relationships in history so I want to recommend that book on that level yeah and I mean to any academics listening to this it’s probably of limited use but uh
Someone like me who read it six years ago and uh was an noice yeah um it opened so many doors for me thank you so much Lauren for taking part in this um it’s been an incredible conversation thank you so much for making the time
For you know an amateur like me to to Walts in and ask you questions yeah I know was my pleasure thank you very much next week where is my treasure also known as when I was dead with Will Ross head over to www.cast.com for the links to the
Various public domain films we’ll be discussing this season and other resources such as show notes how would lubich do it is a production of moving image agency if you enjoyed this episode please rate and review us on whatever podcast service you happen to use we’d like to acknowledge that this podcast
Was produced on the unseated territory of the musqueam Squamish and sa tooth peoples