ABSTRACT
From beginning to end, Weimar culture was intensely political. Not only did the greatest cultural achievements of the Weimar era mirror the political struggles that after 1918 were to become such a familiar trademark of German life, but culture itself was enlisted in the struggle over the political future of the German people. No matter how much Weimar intellectuals may have prided themselves upon the superiority of Geist, or spirit, to the amoral world of power politics, the culture they created was part of a much larger struggle for cultural and intellectual hegemony. It was a struggle waged not so much between different social classes as within the German bourgeoisie between those who believed in cooperation across class lines on the basis of parliamentary democracy and those who categorically rejected the social and political compromises upon which the Weimar Republic had been founded. That this struggle was eventually decided in favor of the latter of these two groups contributed in no small measure to the delegitimation of the Weimar Republic and helped to narrow the range of options that was available to Germany’s political leadership once the failure of Weimar democracy had become an established fact of life. Any study of Weimar culture, therefore, must devote careful attention to the burning political issues that infiltrated virtually every corner of German life from 1919 to 1933. Conversely, any study of Weimar politics must also seek to understand the way in which Weimar culture not only replicated the struggle for social and political hegemony, but entered into that struggle with a sense of engagement that has few parallels in modern history.1
