Living Standards, Education and Culture in the Weimar Republic

Question 1

How did the standard of living change for working-class Germans across the Weimar Era?

Answer 1

• It generally got better

Question 2

List 3 ways the living standards of the working class improved, and give figures.

Answer 2

• Wages increased significantly between 1924 and 1929 (in 1932 they were still 30% higher than they had been in 1924)
• Legal changes such as an 8-hour working day were introduced
• Government spending on housing and welfare increased (20 times more was spent on housing in 1925 than 1913, and 60% more was spent on welfare in 1929 than 1913)

Question 3

What were 2 reasons why the living standards of the working class improved during the Weimar period?

Answer 3

• Unions had more power
• The SPD had more influence in the Reichstag

Question 4

When was the security of the working class threatened? Give 2 ways how.

Answer 4

• During the Great Depression due to:
• welfare cuts
• the erosion of union power

Question 5

How successful were farmers in the Weimar Republic? Give 3 reasons why.

Answer 5

• Not very as:
• immediately after the war the government set restrictions on the price of food to ensure everyone could access it
• after 1924 the existence of cheap imports drove down the price of food
• prices were driven down again (25% between 1927 and 1930) due to unemployment as people had to cut back on food

Question 6

What were 2 positive effects of events in the Weimar Republic for farmers?

Answer 6

• Inflation allowed them to pay off their debts
• The economic chaos in 1922 to 1924 made their produce more valuable

Question 7

How did the middle-class do overall during the Weimar era? What were 2 reasons why?

Answer 7

• Poorly as they lost both money and status rapidly during the hyperinflation crisis
• They also felt threatened by the working class, who were well protected by powerful unions and the SPD

Question 8

What distinction can be made within the middle class of the Weimar Republic, and why is this distinction relevant?

Answer 8

• There was the established middle class and the emerging middle class
• The established middle class: Germans who had been wealthy prior to the war
• The emerging middle class: Germans who became wealthy in the aftermath of the war through having professional or clerical jobs
• The emerging middle class generally did better during hyperinflation

Question 9

How did the middle class do during the rest of the 1920s (before the Great Depression)? Give 4 details and figures.

Answer 9

• The established middle class did poorly as their savings were wiped out during hyperinflation
• They were also critical of the Americanisation of German culture (cinemas, dance halls, jazz clubs)
• The emerging middle class managed to pay off their debts during hyperinflation
• They were also much more accepting of American forms of entertainment
• In 1924, compared to 1913, the living standard of the lower middle class had decreased by 25% while the income of the upper-middle class had decreased by 60%

Question 10

What was life like for the middle class during the Great Depression? Give 3 details.

Answer 10

• Many lost their savings due to bank collapse in 1931
• Some lost their jobs
• Many had their pay decreased

Question 11

What was education like in Germany before WW1? Give 5 details.

Answer 11

• Education was compulsory from 6 to 14
• Children from the upper-class went to private schools
• Working-class children went to ‘Volksschule’, which had class sizes of over 50 pupils, and taught basic skills such as reading, writing and numeracy
• Most schools were confessional (religious) schools
• Education beyond the age of 14 was expensive

Question 12

What effect did the education system that was in place before WW1 have on society?

Answer 12

• It made social mobility very difficult

Question 13

What was the main issue the government encountered when deciding how to structure the education system and schools?

Answer 13

• The SPD wanted to get rid of confessional schools and religious education, but the ZP and other nationalist parties wanted the church to remain involved in education

Question 14

How did the government deal with the issue of religion in schools? Give 4 details.

Answer 14

• They let the Länder decide, but the Länder were required to take into account the wishes of parents in the area
• In the meantime, common/ simultaneous schools were set up, which gave children of various faiths separate religious education
• Confessional schools could run as private schools
• Secular schools also existed

Question 15

List the number of the different types of schools in Germany in 1931.

Answer 15

• Protestant: 29,000
• Catholic: 15,000
• Jewish: 97
• Common: 9000
• Secular: 295

Question 16

How did the Weimar government decide to run elementary schools, and why?

Answer 16

• The 1920 School Law created a single type of elementary school- ‘Grundschule’
• They did this to standardise education for the first 4 years of school for every child

Question 17

In what area had education stayed the most similar to how it was before the war, and how?

Answer 17

• Secondary schools, as education beyond age 10 still had to be paid for, and the types of schools remained the same
• The Gymnasium was the most prestigious type of school, was 9 years long (which was longer than all of the others), and led to university

Question 18

In what way did the Weimar government aim to give poor students the same opportunities as the rich?

Answer 18

• They invented the Aufbauschule, which gave a Gymnasium-style education to academically gifted children who could not afford the Gymnasium fees

Question 19

How did the government partially reach its goal of having an integrated education system? Give 2 ways.

Answer 19

• All schools were inspected
• Churches could no longer run state schools

Question 20

How did universities prevent social mobility? Give 2 details.

Answer 20

• Universities had ‘corporations’ that formed nationwide associations
• Membership in these were important as having or lacking support from them had an impact on a person’s career
• Corporations excluded people according to race and social class

Question 21

What percentage of university students in 1928 were from the working class?

Answer 21

• 2.3%

Question 22

Which areas of Germany were part of the ‘cultural experimentation’ that was going on in the Weimar Republic?

Answer 22

• Mainly Berlin and other urban, modern and industrialised places

Question 23

What was Expressionism, and when had it become part of German culture?

Answer 23

• It was an artistic style and movement that stressed thoughts and feelings more than realism
• It was influential in art and film in the 1920s, but had first become a part of culture before the war

Question 24

What 5 aspects of German history did forms of culture tend to focus on?

Answer 24

• Romanticising Germany’s past
• The war
• The birth of democracy
• The realities of life in the Weimar Republic
• An international future

Question 25

In what 2 ways did some films romanticise the past? Why?

Answer 25

• They had traditional themes
• They focused on popular legends and folk tales
• It gave German people a romantic vision of what Germany used to be like

Question 26

How was the war presented in literature? Give 3 examples.

Answer 26

• Jünger wrote highly popular WW1 stories that presented life in the trenches as heavenly, as he wrote about how men were united with each other and with nature
• Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck was the former military commander of German East Africa, and he wrote about his experiences in Africa, both before and during WW1 where he had actually experienced a lot of success, which fuelled the stab-in-the-back myth
• Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front) wrote about the horrific effect war has on soldiers, and while it became an international bestseller, it was highly controversial in Germany

Question 27

How did film/ filming techniques change during the Weimar Republic? Give 3 details.

Answer 27

• New ways of filming scenes were developed
• The first horror film (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari) was made in 1920
• The number of cinemas doubled

Question 28

How did films comment on the war? Using an example, give 2 details.

Answer 28

• Nosferatu (1922) featured vampires rising from graves, which played on contemporary fears about restless spirits after the war (due to mass burials with no proper funerals)
• Being buried alive was also a common trigger for shell shock

Question 29

What was Neue Sachlichkeit, and what inspired it?

Answer 29

• ‘New Objectivity’
• It was a movement that focused on representing life as it was
• It grew from the pre-existing modernist and Expressionist movements

Question 30

Give 2 examples of works that were part of the New Objectivity movement.

Answer 30

• Otto Dix’s etching ‘Advancing Under Gas’ (1924) presented German soldiers as inhumane, and the trenches as hell
• Georg Grosz’s painting ‘The Pillars of Society’ (1926) critiqued the army, clerics, journalists and Ebert

Question 31

Which facet of culture tended to be the most futuristic? What developments were there in this area?

Answer 31

• Architecture
• In 1919 Walter Gropius set up the design school Bauhaus
• They designed buildings in a futuristic and international way that focused on geometry, and they were built from glass, steel and reinforced concrete

Question 32

Why did cultural experimentation lead to some negative reactions?

Answer 32

• The government allowed freedom of speech, and therefore had very few restrictions (such as banning under-16s from seeing pornography)
• Each social group was therefore allowed to express itself

Question 33

What was a particular negative reaction a social group had to culture in the Weimar Republic? What were 3 reasons why?

Answer 33

• Right-wing supporters did not like:
  the increasing Americanisation of culture (jazz and new women, who were similar to the American ‘flapper’)
• the decadence of culture
• how many Jews were prominent artists, writers and musicians