Claudia Siebrecht’s research while affiliated with University of Sussex and other places

This chapter considers Weimar Germany as a post-war society and addresses the key historiographical strands that interpret the political and cultural significance of the lost war. It demonstrates the importance of the war’s legacy for Weimar political culture by looking at commemorative practices on a national, local, and individual level and by reflecting on some examples of the memory of the war in art, literature, photography, and film. It argues that the plurality and ambivalence of remembrance rituals and war memories in Weimar Germany need to be accounted for beyond a domination by the nationalist right and a left–right divide of commemorative activities. How and why people remembered the way they did is best understood not only at the level of the nation, but by looking at local communities, families, and individuals.

The Weimar Republic (1918–33) was a pivotal period of German and European history and a laboratory of modernity. This handbook is a comprehensive reference book presenting the key findings of recent research on Weimar Germany in the most concise and accessible way. Weimar is often presented as a warning from history, and as such invoked time and time again when challenges of democratic governance are debated. But the chapters of the Handbook demonstrate that Weimar’s history is more than just the lead-up to the Third Reich or a crisis-ridden democracy: It was a period of bold experimentation in politics, society, and culture. Written by an international team of leading experts, the Handbook’s thirty-three chapters provide cutting-edge synthesis of all key topics in the history of Germany’s first democracy, covering social, political, economic, and cultural history with a focus on the historical openness of the period. The Handbook also includes a section with chronological chapters on key developments in the political sphere. Each of the chapters can be read on its own. In addition to established topics, the book includes crucial areas of Weimar history that are often forgotten. These cover the relevance of religion, the strength of pro-republican groups, federalism and nationalism, the significance of rural communities and the agricultural sector, as well as the importance of mass and visual cultures for Weimar contemporaries. Navigating Weimar Germany’s complex and contradictory history is made easier by the sound compass this Handbook provides to all readers interested in this turbulent period.