Ich bin ein [Texas-Born] Berliner

Today’s Sunday edition of The New York Times carries a riveting review of what sounds like a fascinating new history of the Weimar Republic Germany gloried in during the far too brief fifteen years between the 1918 end of World War I and the total political nightfall of Hitler’s 1933 appointment as Chancellor.

The lead paragraph from Brian Ladd’s thoughtful and thought-provoking review:

“Democracy is a fragile flower, as we learn again and again.  Among the many failed democracies of the past century, few held more promise than Germany’s Weimar Republic, and none collapsed into greater horror.  Its story can be told in two ways: as a drama of decadent excess and tragic flaws, or as an elegy recalling noble promises betrayed by treacherous enemies.  Eric D.  Weitz’s Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy falls squarely into the second category….”

Let me extract a few other nuggets from Prof. Weitz’s book (just published by the distinguished Princeton University Press) that appeal in particular to me personally as a newly naturalized citizen of this country, which has given me so much and which I’ve come to love so sincerely.  Let me emphasize right now that anyone who’s ever known me knows that I in no way ever attempt to exculpate Nazi Germany’s uniquely criminal record; I do however go along – at least in principle – with the famous dictum attributed (whether rightly or wrongly) to Mme de Staël: “Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner.”

Now for those tidbits from this book review:

“Weitz, a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, praises the republic’s achievements and condemns its murderers: the right-wing businessmen, army officers and civil servants who handed the country over to the Nazis….”

He goes into Germany’s post-1918 “incomplete revolution that created a model democracy but left it to be administered and defended by its enemies; the frightening 1923 hyperinflation that shattered middle-class trust in the government; and the fragile stability that lasted until the United States stock market crash of 1929 triggered the cancellation of American loans, a financial crisis, mass unemployment and dictatorship….

“Among the republic’s political and economic achievements were an eight-hour day, unemployment insurance and firm constitutional guarantees of liberty.  More famous and controversial was Weimar culture, and Weitz devotes much of his book to some favored highlights….

“The rapid industrialization and urbanization of perhaps the world’s most culturally and scientifically literate society was followed by the blossoming of liberty after the horrors of war.  All this gave Weimar a sense of both possibility and crisis, spurring great minds to extraordinary creativity, whether in traditional forms — Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain and Martin Heidegger’s philosophy — or in new genres shaped by modern technology and politics — the architecture of Bruno Taut and Erich Mendelsohn, László Moholy-Nagy’s photography, Hannah Höch’s photomontages, Brecht and Weill’s revolutionary operas….”

I’ve made Brian Ladd’s entire New York Times review available to anyone who merely clicks here.