Chapter 6

Question 1

Verifies of conflict between tradition and modernity

Answer 1

The war and its aftermath brought extensive social and cultural changes to Germany as well as the political and economic changes outlined in earlier chapters. The Weimar Constitution gave German citizens more rights, freedom, opportunities and greater equality than they had ever been allowed before. Many embraced these opportunities with enthusiasm and innovation.
Others lamented the passing of a way of life in which roles, responsibilities and authority had been clearly defined and society was rooted in traditional values. The Weimar years, therefore, witnessed a conflict between those who challenged traditional values in the name of ‘modernity and those who resisted these changes in an attempt to preserve social stability and an older, specifically German way of life.

Question 2

Social welfare reforms between 1924-27 included (3)

Answer 2

1924
The Public Assistance system, which provided help to the poor and destitute, was modernised
1925
The state accident insurance system, introduced by Bismarck to help those injured at work, was extended to cover those suffering from occupational diseases
1927
A national unemployment insurance system was introduced to provide benefits for the unemployed, financed by contributions from workers and employers

Question 3

Limits to social reform success

Answer 3

This was an impressive list of reforms but, for many Germans, the welfare system promised more than it delivered. It was also very expensive. In 1926, the state was supporting about 800,000 disabled war veterans, 360,000 war widows and over 900,000 war orphans. This was in addition to old age pensions and, after 1927, the cost of unemployment benefits. The welfare system also needed a large and expensive bureaucracy to administer it. Taxes were increased after 1924, but there was a limit to how much the better-off were prepared to shoulder the burden of welfare expenditure. The result was that those administering benefits at a local level used many devices to keep expenditure down. Means tests were tightened up, snoopers were used to check that claimants were not cheating the system and there were increasing delays in paying benefits. Those in need of support, including large numbers of war veterans and their families, felt they were being humiliated and insulted by the welfare system, undermining their support for the Weimar Republic.

Question 4

How did living standards improve?

Answer 4

The living standards of millions of Germans undoubtedly improved during the years 1924-28. Those in work, particularly those represented by powerful trade unions, were able to maintain their living standards by negotiating wage increases. Those dependent on welfare benefits were less well off, and undoubtedly suffered some hardships, but they were prevented from falling into abject poverty by the welfare system. Business owners and their salaried employees benefited from the improved trading position for German companies at this time.

Question 5

How did living standards not improve?

Answer 5

There were, however, many exceptions to this rule. Those who had lost their savings during the hyperinflation of 1923 were unable to regain the comfortable lifestyles they had once enjoyed. Farmers suffered from poor trading conditions and low prices, and their incomes were falling. The air of confidence that was exuded in cities such as Berlin was not apparent across the whole country.

Question 6

How did women become more liberated?

Answer 6

In 1929, a female journalist, Elsa Hermann, wrote that the modern woman refuses to lead the life of a lady and a housewife, preferring to depart from the ordained path and go her own way. There was much talk in Weimar Germany about the ‘new woman, who symbolised the way women’s lives had changed since the end of the war. She was portrayed as being free, independent, sexually liberated and increasingly visible in public life. The Weimar Constitution had given women equality with men in voting rights and in access to education. It had also given women equal opportunities in civil service appointments and the right to equal pay. This coincided with a major change in the gender balance of the population as a result of the war. Over two million Germans, mostly young males, had been killed in the war, so there were fewer opportunities for young women to follow the conventional path of marriage and child-rearing to economic security. The war had also brought many more women into paid employment to replace the men who had fought. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that many young German women in the 1920s had expectations about their lives which were very different from those of their mothers and that there were greater opportunities to fulfil those expectations.

Question 7

How was the new woman limited?

Answer 7

The extent of change, however, should not be exaggerated. Moreover, not all German citizens approved of the changes - not even all women.
Although the constitution gave women new legal and civil rights, the much more traditional Civil Code of
1896 remained in force. Among other things, this code laid down that, in a marriage, the husband had the right to decide on all matters concerning family life, including whether his wife should undertake paid employment.
The most popular women’s group in the 1920s was the League of German Women (BDF), which had 900,000 members. Far from supporting the
‘new woman, the BDF promoted traditional family values and maternal responsibilities. This was echoed by the more conservative political parties and by the churches, which were alarmed by changes they considered to be a threat to the family. In many ways, therefore, the concept of the new woman’ was more of a cultivated myth than a social reality for the majority of German women.

Question 8

What was the Civil Code of 1896?

Answer 8

since the
unification of Germany in 1871 there had been a need to bring the separate laws of each of the German states into a uniform national framework; the Civil Code of 1896, which concerned all aspects of personal and civil rights and responsibilities, provided that common framework

Question 9

Areas of women liberation

Answer 9

Employment
Sexual freedom
Politics and public life

Question 10

Women progress in employment

Answer 10

• The constitution gave women greater equality in employment rights
• By 1925, 36 per cent of the German workforce were women
• By 1933, there were 100,000 women teachers and 3000 women doctors.

Question 11

Women lack of progress in employment

Answer 11

• The ‘demobilisation’ laws after the war required women to leave their jobs so that ex-soldiers could find employment
• In many occupations, women were required to give up their employment when they married
• Women were paid much less than men doing equivalent work
• Married women who continued to have paid jobs were attacked as ‘double-earners’ and blamed for male unemployment. There were campaigns in the press and by conservative parties for the dismissal of married women workers.

Question 12

Woman progress regarding sexual freedom

Answer 12

• Birth control became more widely available and the birth rate declined
• Divorce rates increased
• There was a rise in the number of abortions; by 1930, there was an estimated 1 million abortions a year.

Question 13

Women lack of progress regarding sexual freedom

Answer 13

• Abortion was a criminal offence and would often be performed by unqualified people. In 1930, there were an estimated 10-12,000 deaths each year from abortions
• The decline in the birth rate was attacked by the conservative press and politicians as a ‘birth strike that threatened the health of the nation and the continued existence of the race
• Catholic and Protestant churches were vigorously opposed to birth control, divorce and abortion. Many German women were committed members of church congregations.

Question 14

Women progress regarding politics and public life

Answer 14

• Women gained equal voting rights and the right to be
Reichstag deputies in the Weimar Constitution
• In 1919, 41 women were elected to the Reichstag; the number of women deputies fell in subsequent elections below but the German Reichstag had a higher proportion of female deputies than the British House of Commons
• Women were also very active in local government at state and city level.

Question 15

Women lack of progress regarding politics and public life

Answer 15

• There were no female representatives in the Reichsrat
• No woman became a cabinet member during the
Weimar Republic
• No political party had a female leader in the Weimar years
• Only the communists (KPD] made gender equality a key element in its programme but it was the least appealing party to the new female electorate
• The party that gained the most from female suffrage was the Catholic Centre Party. In Protestant areas, the conservative DNVP and the DVP appealed most to women voters. None of these parties gave any support to feminist issues.

Question 16

Who was Marie Juchacz?

Answer 16

Marie Juchacz (1879-1956) was a long-standing member of the SPD and elected to the National Assembly in 1919. She was the first woman to make a speech in any legislative body in Germany. She served as a Reichstag deputy for the SPD until 1933. Marie came from a poor, rural background and left school at 14 to earn money for her family. She had been introduced to politics by her older brother, Otto Gohlke, and joined the SPD in 1908, when she became one of the first female party members.

Question 17

Who was Paula Müller-Otfried?

Answer 17

Paula Müller-Otfried (1865-1946) was a devout
Protestant and co-founder of the German Protestant
Women’s League. She was very active in her church and in social work, and was opposed to women’s suffrage, warning that voting rights would not improve women’s lives. Nevertheless, as a member of the DNVP, she became a Reichstag deputy in 1920 and continued in this role until 1932

Question 18

Who was Clara Zetkin?

Answer 18

Clara Zetkin (1857-1933) was a KPD member of the Reichstag from 1920 to 1933. She had been active in the SPD before 1914 and was a leading campaigner for women’s rights, having organised the first International Women’s Day in 1911. She was also a close friend of Rosa Luxemburg.
Clara blamed capitalism for reducing women to the status of breeders and homebuilders, and believed women would only be truly liberated by a socialist revolution

Question 19

Who was Marianne Weber?

Answer 19

Marianne Weber (1870-1954) was an intellectual and academic, and the wife of Max Weber, a leading sociologist. She wrote several books on feminist issues and was active in the German women’s suffrage movement before 1914. In 1919, she joined the DDP and was the first woman elected to state legislature in Baden She wrote that ‘It is our responsibility to infuse all life with our special mix of feminine and humane influence.

Question 20

Significance of the women issue

Answer 20

The achievement of women’s suffrage in 1919 did not usher in a new era of female equality, but it did bring the debate on women’s rights to the heart of political debate. The Weimar Republic witnessed a continuing struggle between those who wanted Germany to become a more modern, free and equal society and those who fought to retain traditional values. The clash over women’s rights was on the front line in this struggle, with the so-called ‘new women increasingly being used as scapegoats for Germany’s social and economic ills.

Question 21

Female deputies in the Reichstag

Answer 21

1919: 41
1920: 37
1924 (Маy): 27
1924 (December): 33
1928: 33
1930: 42

Question 22

How were many young people beginning to act?

Answer 22

The struggle for control over the behaviour and development of German youth was another key battleground in the Weimar Republic’s ‘culture wars. Source 2 reflects a more widespread concern that young people in Weimar Germany were breaking free of the constraints of family, school and religion, and turning increasingly to a life of crime and anti-social behaviour.

Question 23

What problems did the youth face in their lives?

Answer 23

Those children, mostly from working-class families, who did not attend the highly selective Gymnasium schools, were supposed to leave school at the age of 14 and begin an apprenticeship or employment In the Weimar years, however, there were fewer apprenticeships and more youth unemployment. Young people suffered disproportionately from the rise in unemployment after 1924. In 1925-26, 17 per cent of the unemployed were in the 14-21 age group. This was partly because there had been a baby boom between 1900 and 1910, so many more young people were seeking employment at a time when employers were reducing their workforces. The benefits system provided some help for young people and day centres were established to help youths acquire the skills needed to find work, but neither could compensate for the lack of employment opportunity. The result was that many young, working-class Germans living in big cities joined gangs to find the comradeship, mutual support and sense of adventure that was otherwise lacking in their lives.

Question 24

Youth ‘cliques’ in Hamburg

Answer 24

Youth cliques (another name for gangs) were prevalent in the working-class districts of large German cities. In Hamburg, there were cliques with such names as the Farmers’ Fear, Red Apaches, Death Defiers, Tartar’s Blood and Eagles Claw. The names reflected the importance of projecting an image of physical toughness, aggressive masculinity and anti-social attitudes. Each group was associated with a particular district of the city. The cliques often used taverns as their meeting places because alcohol played an important part in their sub-culture. Prospective recruits were required to undertake an initiation test, such as stealing or vandalism, to demonstrate their willingness to break the law. Each group had their own uniform and flag.

Question 25

How had education traditionally been in Germany?

Answer 25

Germany prided itself on having one of the best state education systems in Europe. It had been developed in Prussia and then extended to the rest of Germany after 1871. Alongside the Gymnasiums for those aiming at university, there were Realschule, which provided six years of schooling for children who would go on to apprenticeships. Although there were very few elite private schools in Germany, the state education system was nevertheless divided along class lines, since the majority of those at Gymnasiums were drawn from the middle and upper classes. The system was also divided along religious lines, since the Protestant and Catholic churches had a powerful influence over religious education.

Question 26

How was education reformed?

Answer 26

Education reformers in the Weimar Republic aimed to break down these divides and provide a comprehensive, non-sectarian education that would be free to all pupils. They were only partially successful in their efforts. The main educational reform of the Weimar period was the introduction of elementary schools, which all children would attend for the first four years of education. Those who did not then pass the entrance examination for a Gymnasium would be able to continue at elementary school for a further four years.

Question 27

How did education remain the same?

Answer 27

The reformers did not, however, succeed in their aim of removing the influence of the churches from schools. Both the Catholic and Protestant churches vigorously and successfully defended their right to promote religious teachings through the state education system, supported by their respective political parties

Question 28

Three main types of youth groups

Answer 28

Wandervogel
Church youth groups
Political youth groups

Question 29

What was the Wandervogel?

Answer 29

The first Wandervogel group, or ‘wandering birds, was set up in 1896 by a Berlin schoolteacher. The movement quickly spread and groups consisted of mainly middle-class boys. Although the Wandervogel were non-political, they were nevertheless highly nationalistic, with a very romanticised view of Germany’s past. They hated industrialisation and big cities, and much of their time was spent hiking in the forests, swimming in lakes and rivers, and sleeping under canvas. In many ways, therefore, they rejected middle-class social conventions and sought the freedom of wild spaces. Some adopted a more unconventional lifestyle by practising nudism and vegetarianism.

Question 30

Info about Church youth groups

Answer 30

Both the Catholic and Protestant churches had youth groups. The Catholics had many different groups aimed at different sections of young people, e.g. New Germany, which was founded in 1919, and aimed at middle-class youths. The Protestants did not give youth work as high a priority and their groups had far fewer members. In both religions, the tasks of the youth groups were to promote religious observance and instil respect for the church, family and school.

Question 31

Info about political youth groups

Answer 31

All of the main political parties had their youth sections, e.g.
• The Social Democratic Youth movement (SPD) was founded in 1925. It had the most members of any political youth groups in the Weimar period.
• The Young Communist League was founded in 1925 for the children of
KPD members.
• The Bismarck Youth, linked to the DNVP, was founded in 1922 and reached a membership of 42,000 by 1928. Its strongest appeal was among middle and upper class youths in Protestant areas, but it also had a strong working-class following in Berlin.
•The Hitler Youth was linked to the Nazi Party. Its growth was slow in the 1920s, reaching a membership of only about 13,000 in 1929.

Question 32

Influence of Jews under Weimar

Answer 32

There were more than half a million Jews living in Germany under the Weimar Republic. Eighty per cent of Jews in Germany (400,000) lived in cities and were well educated.
Many of them felt much more German than Jewish and were intensely patriotic. Many believed in assimilation - keeping their ethnic and cultural identity but becoming fully integrated and accepted in mainstream German society.
The achievements of German Jews under the Weimar Republic were remarkable. Jews represented only one per cent of the total population, but they achieved a degree of influence out of all proportion to their numbers. German Jews achieved prominence in politics and the press, in business and banking, in the universities and in almost all aspects of Weimar culture. Jews had huge influence in the publishing of books and newspapers.
Jewish musicians were at the forefront of musical life. Jewish producers and directors dominated theatre and the new medium of cinema.

Question 33

Jewish influence in politics and the press

Answer 33

German Jews were already well established in the world of politics before
1914. Jewish publishing firms had a powerful influence in the media, with two Jewish-run newspapers in particular, the Berliner Tageblatt and the Frankfurter Zeitung, promoting liberal political views. Theodor Wolff, editor of Berliner Tageblatt, was the driving force behind the moderate Liberal DDP and Walter Rathenau, who became Foreign Minister in 1922, was also a leading member of the DDP. Jews were also prominent in the SPD and the KPD. Rosa Luxemburg, Hugo Haase and Kurt Eisner the leader of the revolution in Bavaria in November 1918, all came from Jewish backgrounds.

Question 34

Jewish influence in industry

Answer 34

German Jews achieved considerable wealth and influence in industry and commerce, although the extent of this influence was massively exaggerated by anti-Jewish propaganda, both at the time and afterwards. For example, the Rathenau family controlled the huge electrical engineering firm AEG until 1927. Jewish firms dominated coal-mining, steelworks and the chemical industry in Silesia, but had very little importance in the western industrial areas of the Rhineland or the Ruhr.

Question 35

Jewish influence in commerce

Answer 35

Jewish banking families, such as the Rothschilds, Mendelssohns and Bleichröders, owned about 50 per cent of private banks. Jewish directors also managed several major public banks. To make such a list of Jewish banking interests can be misleading, however; in the 1920s, the role of Jews in banking was actually declining. Banks owned by Jews made up about 18 per cent of the banking sector in Germany, a considerably smaller proportion than in the years before 1914.
Jews were particularly active and successful in retailing. They owned almost half of the firms involved in the cloth trade.

Question 36

Jewish influence in professions

Answer 36

Jews were immensely successful in the professions, especially law and medicine, making up 16 per cent of the lawyers and 11 per cent of doctors in Germany. There were especially high numbers in Berlin; more than half of the doctors there in 1930 were Jewish and of 3400 lawyers, 1835 were Jews.

Question 37

Jewish influence in academia

Answer 37

Jews also had a significant impact on the academic life of Germany. Of the
38 Nobel Prizes awarded to people working in Germany up to 1938, nine (24 per cent) were awarded to Jews. Germany was a world leader in the physical sciences, not least because of Albert Einstein, who revolutionised theoretical physics with his work on the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.

Question 38

The extent of Jewish assimilation

Answer 38

The vast majority of German Jews wished to assimilate. In language, dress and lifestyle, thousands of Jews looked and acted like other Germans. Many had married non-Jewish spouses, given up religious observance or converted to Christianity. By the late 1920s, the process of assimilation was far advanced The chief factor limiting the degree of Jewish integration into German society. however, was the reluctance of many Germans to stop identifying Jews as somehow alien. There was still a significant gap between wanting to be completely assimilated and feeling the security of being completely accepted.

Question 39

Antisemitism under Weimar

Answer 39

in the difficult early years of the Weimar Republic from 1918 to 1924, there was a backlash against the perceived threat of Jewish Bolshevism, as seen in events such as the Spartacus uprising in Berlin and in the breakaway regime of Kurt Eisner in Munich. Anti-Semitism was part of the violent nationalism behind right-wing movements such as the Freikorps and the NSDAP formed in 1920. There was also a surge of hostility against Jewish financiers at the time of the hyperinflation crisis in 1923. Between 1924 and 1930, however, as Weimar Germany entered its ‘Golden Age of economic recovery and political stability, anti-Semitism was pushed to the fringes of public and political life.
There was still fierce opposition to perceived Jewish influence, however, with frequent accusations of corruption and exploitation by Jewish bankers and businessmen.

Question 40

Barmat scandal of 1925

Answer 40

Some scandals in the later 1920s provided ammunition for anti-Semitic attacks. The most sensational was the Barmat scandal of 1925. The Barmat brothers, Julius, Salomon and Henri, were Jewish businessmen who had emigrated from Galicia in Poland just after the war. After a high-profile court case, they were convicted of having bribed public officials to obtain loans from the Prussian State Bank and the National Post Office. Julius and Salomon were eventually sentenced to 11 months in jail.

Question 41

What was Jewish Bolshevism?

Answer 41

a term used by anti-Semites in the Weimar period to imply that Jews and communists were closely associated and represented a danger to German values

Question 42

Who was Kurt Eisner?

Answer 42

Kurt Eisner (1867-1919) was a journalist and leading member of the SPD in Bavaria. In 1917, he joined the breakaway USPD party and was also imprisoned for treason. After his release from prison in November 1918, he led the revolt in Bavaria that resulted in the establishment of the short-lived Bavarian Socialist Republic. He was assassinated in Munich in 1919 by a right-wing nationalist.

Question 43

Who was Theodor Wolff?

Answer 43

Theodor Wolff (1868-1943) was a liberal journalist from a wealthy
Jewish family. From 1887, he worked for the Mosse publishing house; in 1906, Mosse appointed him editor of the liberal newspaper Berliner Tageblatt. From 1916, Wolff and his paper came under attack for urging a negotiated peace. In 1918, he was one of the founders of the DDP. He remained active and influential until 1933, when he went into exile after his books were burned by the Nazis.
In 1943, he was arrested in Italy and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he died.

Question 44

How did arts and culture change?

Answer 44

In 1919, the German writer Paul Ernst wrote, ‘Our age is over! Thank God it is over! A new age dawns that will be different! The new political and social freedom in Weimar Germany gave rise to an era of experimentation and innovation in the arts. Germany in the 1920s witnessed such an explosion of creativity in art, architecture, music, literature, theatre, film and music that it has been described as a ‘cradle of modernity? Yet, as with social and political change, not all Germans welcomed the new developments in culture and there was ongoing tension between modernists and conservatives.

Question 45

Berlin’s nightclubs

Answer 45

The greater cultural and personal freedom that was a feature of the Weimar Republic was epitomised in the vibrant nightlife of Berlin in the 1920s, especially in the more prosperous years after 1924. Berlin nightclubs became renowned for their cabarets in which nudity featured strongly. One such club, the Eldorado, was described by a German composer, Friedrich Hollander, as a supermarket of eroticism. Gay men, lesbians and transvestites, who before 1918 were forced to conceal their sexuality, now felt free to display it openly. American jazz music, much of it played by black American musicians, became popular. Many of the comedians performing in the clubs attacked politicians and authoritarian attitudes.
Many older, more traditionally minded Germans regarded the Berlin nichtclub scene with horror and contempt. They hated the influence of the USA on German cultural life and attacked the Weimar Republic for relaxing censorship. They felt that order and discipline had been destroyed by the revolution of 1918 and that German society was becoming morally degenerate.

Question 46

Art

Answer 46

The predominant movement in German art at this time was Expressionism.
It originated in Germany in the early twentieth century and was associated with artists such as Kandinsky, George Grosz, Franz Marc and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Expressionist painters believed that their works should express meaning or emotion rather than physical reality, hence their paintings were abstract in style and vivid in colour.

Question 47

Music

Answer 47

Expressionism also influenced German classical composers in this period.
Among the most innovative were Hindemith and Arnold Schoenberg.
Schoenberg attempted to convey powerful emotions in his music but avoided traditional forms of beauty. He was very much associated with atonal music, which lacks a key, and sounds harsh and lacking in harmony to traditionalists

Question 48

Literature

Answer 48

Expressionism was also a key influence on German literature of the period.
Novelists and poets adopted a free form of writing in which they focused on a character’s internal mental state rather than on the external social reality. A common theme in German expressionist literature was revolt against parental authority. The leading German writer of the period was Thomas Mann. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. Unlike many German intellectuals, he was a staunch supporter of the Weimar Republic and decided to live in Switzerland after the Nazis came to power in 1933.

Question 49

Architecture

Answer 49

The founding of the Bauhaus at Dessau by William Gropius in 1919 was a key event in the development of modernist art in Germany. Although primarily an architectural school, the Bauhaus was also a school of art, design and photography. Its students were encouraged to break down the barriers between art and technology by incorporating new materials such as steel, concrete and glass into their designs. Students were taught to make the function of an object or building into the key element of their designs, stripping away superfluous ornamentation.

Question 50

Theatre

Answer 50

Many German dramatists incorporated expressionist ideas into their productions. Sets were stark and plays relied on abstraction and symbolism to convey their message. Much of experimental theatre in Weimar Germany was explicitly political, attacking capitalism, nationalism and war. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill developed a new form of music theatre that came to symbolise Weimar Berlin, above all The Threepenny Opera, a savage left-wing satire that treated respectable middle classes as villains, while making heroes out of criminals and prostitutes. They were attacked by the right as ‘cultural Bolsheviks’.

Question 51

Film

Answer 51

Berlin became an important centre for world cinema, developing modern techniques that would later be exploited by Nazi propaganda. Important figures of Jewish descent in the German film industry included Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder (later famous in post-war Hollywood) and Josef von Sternberg. It was Sternberg who directed the best-known film of the Weimar era, The Blue Angel, starring Marlene Dietrich as Lola, the sexy singer in a sleazy nightclub cabaret who seduces an innocent old professor played by Emil Jannings.

Question 52

Summary

Answer 52

Cultural innovation divided Germans in the Weimar era, just as they were also divided by class, religion and politics. In rural areas and small towns, cultural change was no more than a rumour, something that was happening in faraway cities such as Berlin and Hamburg. In these areas, the influence of the churches was still strong: traditional family values held sway and people placed great store by traditional German culture. Yet even in the more remote areas of the country, the spread of cinema and increasing popularity of radio brought new cultural influences to the wider population. There was a fear on the right that cultural change brought in unwelcome foreign influences, whether in the form of cultural communism’ or American influences such as jazz music and Hollywood films. Modern culture was regarded by conservatives as decadent, immoral and un-German.
The Weimar Republic gave its citizens greater freedom than would have seemed possible in the pre-war era. This freedom was welcomed by many but feared by others. It allowed experimentation in the arts and the opportunity for women and young people to break through many of the barriers that had constrained them in the past. These changes, however, provoked a fierce conservative reaction as the enemies of the Weimar Republic fought to resist cultural change.