ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the fate of Hamburg artisans in the late Weimar Republic neither that handicraft as a social entity was neither weak nor dying nor the easy prey of political marauders such as the Nazis. In the Weimar Republic in particular, structural strain and instability tended to focus around several problems which had long been important in determining the peculiar course of German history. The struggle between the Weimar Republic and handicraft was institutional in character and hardly amenable to rational compromise based on shared consensus. The point is that in contrast to all other political parties in the depression the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei comprehended both the institutional meaning of handicraft and the institutional nature of its conflict with the Weimar Republic. In Hamburg, for example, an almost unbreachable chasm developed within the profession between the dwarf handicraft establishments and those approaching factory proportions.
