In the London Review of Books Eric Hobsbawm reviews a book on the Weimer Republic.

For the basic achievements of the Weimar Republic and the reasons non-Germans take an interest in it are not political but intellectual and cultural. The word today suggests the Bauhaus, George Grosz, Max Beckmann, Walter Benjamin, the great photographer August Sander and a number of remarkable movies. Weitz picks out six names: Thomas Mann, Brecht, Kurt Weill, Heidegger and the less familiar theorist Siegfried Kracauer and the artist Hannah Höch. One could as easily add, say, Carl Schmitt on the (rare) intellectual right, Ernst Bloch on the far left and the great Max Weber in the middle.

A surprising list, given that both Heidegger and Schmitt not only opposed Weimer, but actively supported the Nazis.


Hannah Höch's Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany  ¶ 7:59 AM