The Weimar Republic years seem to serve a very similar purpose in the creation of a German-Jewish mythos as did Moses Mendelssohn. What do you think it is that make people pine for this period of German Jewish history? What do *you* find the most interesting?
For the record, I've got a thing for Bauhaus.
I think the pining for Weimar is pretty easy to understand (for the record, I spent a lovely night in Weimar a couple years ago. I had come to see Buchenwald, but had gotten there too late. It was the Christmas season, and the town square looked and felt like it was out of a movie. Everyone [including myself] drank too much gluwine and had a fantastic time).
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, back to the Republic.
It offers a different way forward for Germans, a different course that history could have taken. Going back to the conversation that we had in class about 'inevitability', I think Weimar represents that fantasy world where the Third Reich never happened, the Final Solution never happened, and (perhaps most importantly for the German psyche/fantasy world) the (eternal?) shame of Germany and Germans wouldn't exist.
Daniel
From Sara:
ReplyDeleteMight I suggest that the Weimar Republic was an extended "liminal" period for German Jewry. While no one could predict the future, the unstable economic times following WWI and the rise of the National Socialist Party fueled a flurry of creativity and social critique that perhaps can only be created out of desperate times like these. Art forms and literature express social critique and social anxiety both on the collective and individual levels of experience. That the Jews in Weimar were some of the most creative thinkers at this time speaks to how an intense social and political climate influences the most learned and intellectual of a population. A nostalgia for that time indicates the mourning of a lost world that perhaps never really had roots, and a longing for the naivete of experience that the Jews of Germany would never have again.
Unfortunately, I can do little but echo the sentiments expressed here. Nostalgia surrounding the Weimar Republic appears to stem from the period's representation as an apex for Jewish civilization in Germany. Just like the losing gambler fondly remembers all the money sitting on the craps table before he lost his roll, Jews remember their purported stature and achievements during the Weimar period. Such memories become all the more nostalgic when depicted against the backdrop of anti-Semitism that hampered Jewish achievement, even during the Weimar period.
ReplyDelete