Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Times

Step Into History

Culture in Weimar Germany

Weimar Culture

Born out of defeat in 1918 and the collapse of the German Empire, the new republic didn’t just change politics, it cracked open society. Old hierarchies weakened, censorship loosened, and suddenly a flood of new ideas: artistic, political, sexual, rushed in all at once. It was chaotic, electric, and deeply unstable.

Politically, the streets were just as alive as the theaters. It lived in the past and the present simultaneously. While it proclaimed itself to be a Republic, old titles, ministries, even everyday language clung to the old term, Reich, meaning ’empire’. Elections chose a Reich President. Even Parliament was still known as the Reichstag.

But there was a divide between the people and the government. Few people got excited about politics. The great mass of poor and laborers were still living day-to-day and tired of bourgeois policies that did little to help dig them out of poverty.

Entertainment

Berlin became Europe’s playground. Jazz, imported from the United States, flooded clubs and dance halls. Bands played syncopated rhythms that older Germans found alien, even offensive. To young Germans, jazz was a type of personal liberation; movement and spontaneity.

Jazz meant different things to different people. To conservatives, it wasn’t just music; jazz was a symbol of cultural decay, foreign influence, and racial mixing. Alicia Gerstel thought its mass adoption was a sign of the collapse of the middle-class and long-established traditions.

Despite objections, for better or worse, it took Europe by storm. An entire industry cropped up around music like never before seen. Clubs were packed with well-dressed gentlemen and ladies trying the latest dances from across the Atlantic. The lower classes, unable to afford admission to nightclubs, played their own versions in beer halls and taverns across the country.

Another type of venue surged to popularity next to jazz. The cabaret.

These weren’t just nightclubs. They were political satire, musical havens, and social commentary rolled into one room. Performers mocked politicians, explored taboo themes, and blurred lines of gender and identity. Shows could be hilarious one moment and brutally cynical the next. If you wanted to understand Weimar, you didn’t read a manifesto. you sat at a small table, drank something questionable, and watched a cabaret act tear society apart with a smile.

The Katakombe, a cabaret bar in Berlin, was home to well-known headliner Werner Finck. When the Nazis came to power and started to destroy their opponents, the joint was packed with Berliners looking for relief.

The only place in Germany where a kind of public, courageous, witty, and elegant resistance was taking place. He spoke with infinitely quiet mockery, melancholy, and sadness. Listening to him was extraordinarily comforting.

Sebastian Haffner. Defying Hitler.

Today, we have similar TV programs like Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. Except back then, the audience can drink and smoke inside. And instead of a single script broadcast to the entire country, imagine a hundred little shows in each city.

Weimar also produced some of the most influential art of the 20th century. Artistic and designer movements like Bauhaus redefined architecture and design with clean lines and functional beauty to be mass produced.

Film exploded with innovation. Dark, psychological works like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [left] reflected a society grappling with trauma and instability. Nosferatu [right] revolutionized the horror genre. Metropolis [center] mirrored the wide division between social classes. All over Germany, writers, painters, and musicians weren’t just creating; they were dissecting reality, often with unsettling results.

Annual festivals decorated the calendar: Oktoberfest and Carnival were popular in the major cities, especially the capital. Working class, poverty stricken, and wealthy converged on big events like these.

Sebastian Haffner remembered the last Carnival celebration he attended in 1932. Over the years, he’d collected an assortment of memories.

“A carnival ball in Berlin is like a large, colorful, well-organized love raffle, with winning tickets and duds. You take your chance, join up with a girl, kiss and cuddle her, and go through all the preparatory stages of a love affair in a single night. It all takes place in a wild, garish environment with the clashing noise of several dance bands in a building decorated with colored paper accompanied by as much alcohol as you can afford.”

Sebastian Haffner. Defying Hitler

Radios began mass production in 1923. Early programming consisted of orchestras, opera singers, dramatic voice acts, news, and politics. Over two million households had a registered radio set by 1929.

“All at once the world barged into our living room. From there I followed the events of the Day of Potsdam, as it was called in 1933.”

Martin Koller, German citizen.

Voices of the Third Reich

Dating & Self-Identity

After the death and starvation of the First World War, young Germans looked around and realized they were still alive. Their parent’s method of finding marriage through family connections and chaperoned parlor dates didn’t seem exciting anymore. Instead, young adults went out and met dates at the cinema, bowling alley, and nightclubs.

Sexual culture more broadly underwent a kind of quiet revolution. New fashions grew more risqué with each passing year. Cicely Hamilton visited Berlin to witness the naked reality:

Two young men of the party were clothed in nothing but attenuated trunks. The girls, one wore shorts…and a brassiere – a considerable expanse of the diaphragm being visible between the two. The other contented herself with bathing drawers only and naked from the hips upward. Girls and men alike were entirely unembarrassed by the passing spectator.  

Julia Boyd. Travellers In The Third Reich

Some visitors to Germany were shocked to see farm workers and laborers worked shirtless. Such sights were not seen among the workers in England and France who tended to cover their bodies even on the warmest of days.

Geoffrey Cox visited Berlin enroute to a professorship at Oxford. He wrote,

The great thing in Germany today is the emergence of a new type of person. One sees them everywhere – sunburnt, wearing sensible clothes, and of such splendid physique. There are innumerable physical culture clubs [gyms] and bathing societies, etc. and every attempt is made to get people out in the open.

Julia Boyd. Travellers in the Third Reich

An Early LGBTQ Safe Place

Berlin became one of the most open cities in the world for LGBTQ individuals.

Dr. Hirschfield founded the Institute for Sexual Science which conducted pioneering research on sexuality and gender identity and also provided the first gender affirming care.

Translation:

“Eva Katter is, in clinical terms, a transvestite. To maintain her mental well-being and her ability to work, it is necessary that she is enabled to wear clothing of the male gender, which corresponds to her nature.“

Bars and taverns like the Cosy Corner, Hallesches Tor, and Kleist Diele catered to the community with music, dancing, and company. They were some of the first places like this in the world where LGBTQ could be themselves.

American, Christopher Isherwood settled in Berlin after discovering his true self while on a previous visit:

At last, he was being brought face to face with his tribe. Up to now, he had behaved as though the tribe didn’t exist and homosexuality were a private way of life…but now he was forced to admit kindship with these fellow tribesmen.”

Robert Beachy. Gay Berlin

This was not a fringe movement. It was visible, organized, and, for a time, tolerated. Legally, homosexuality violated the law and would get you sent to prison but there were few cops willing to trouble themselves over it. This also made Weimar a target for those who saw it as moral collapse incarnate.

Labor & Work

Business in the Weimar Republic operated much as it had under the Kaiser. Private ownership of businesses remained the norm and suffered all the stress of a market economy when times were bad.

The hyperinflation of 1923 caused real problems for the middle-classes. Savings were wiped out overnight. Shortages of food and medicines plagued the middle and lower classes. Inflation rose by the hour. Half of the neighborhood economy seemed to work on a barter principle.

“A pound of potatoes which yesterday had cost fifty thousand marks now cost a hundred thousand. The salary of sixty-five thousand marks brought home the previous Friday was no longer sufficient to buy a packet of cigarettes on Tuesday.”

Sebastian Haffner. Defying Hitler.

New banknotes were printed to keep up with the demand of money. Denominations like the 50-million [left] 500-million [center] and 5-billion [right].

“During the Inflation, a bread roll cost 20 million marks. Mailing a letter cost 100 million. A quart of milk cost 300 million.”

Voices of the Third Reich

With the implementation of the Dawes Plan in 1924, Germans started returning to work in droves. Many opened or expanded small businesses providing services to the public like laundry, tailoring, accounting, etc.

Labor unions expanded too. Many factories had a union or fed into one of the larger trade organizations. For the worker, these unions gave them a voice to speak before management regarding wages, safety, and efficiency.

The republic also made strides in worker protections. The eight-hour workday became standard at its inception and systems of collective bargaining expanded. Welfare measures: unemployment insurance, housing programs, etc., attempted to stabilize lives battered by war and inflation.

These are labor rights most of us can happily take for granted. Workers present at the inception of these protections it was being liberated from a culture of labor exploitation and expendability. Weimar wasn’t decadence; it was the first time the state seemed to acknowledge they existed as citizens rather than expendable labor.

When the Wall Street Crash of 1929 caused the Great Depression, the German economy went bankrupt almost overnight. Massive foreign-loans were called up for immediate repayment. Businesses disappeared. Savings evaporated. Unemployment rose to 25%!

“Unemployment destroyed people’s self-respect and undermined their status in a society where men’s prestige, recognition, and identity derived from the job they did.”

Richard J. Evans, Coming of the Third Reich

The Great Crash of 1929. Millions rush the banks.

In a letter to her son abroad, Betty Scholem described what happened to her family business during the beginning of the Depression:

“It hit us like a catastrophe. An enormous fall in the demand for price tags caused our debts to swell. Just as all business came to a halt, the bank failed; so there was no one to speak to. The banks went into a government holding company, which showed no interest in the debts of customers. All of this happened at once. It looks as if we’ll lose everything. It’s cold comfort to know that the entire commercial sector is in the same position and that more shops are going under than staying afloat.”

Crisis of National Identity

But these gains came with constant tension. Employers resisted union power, while workers, especially those aligned with the KPD, often saw reforms as insufficient. Strikes were frequent, sometimes paralyzing entire industries. The middle class, squeezed by inflation and instability, often resented both sides. They watched workers demand more and elites protect themselves, and concluded, fairly or not, that the system itself was broken.

Enter to the stage, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD)! They saw Weimar not as a republic to improve, but as a temporary phase before a second revolution. Inspired (and loosely financed) by the USSR, they organized strikes, uprisings, and paramilitary groups like the Red Front Fighters. Their presence was physical, loud, and often violent. They clashed regularly with right-wing militias like the Stahlhelm and Brownshirts.

Later, the National Socialists, or Nazis, became a leading competitor against the moderates and the Left. Lead by a World War 1 veteran named Adolf Hitler, they rallied citizens against the Versailles Treaty and those who signed it. As ardent enemies of the Communists, Nazis would attack them every opportunity in the streets.

“After listening to what was said, I concluded that there were two options. One could try a new beginning with the Communists under Russian leadership or join the National Socialists…I couldn’t see any third option and I guess millions of other Germans didn’t either.”

Otto Kumm, German citizen

Voices of the Third Reich.

Wilhelm Fischer was only ten before the Great Depression. While at a tram stop, he witnessed a happenstance meeting between two members of the NSDAP. Upon seeing each other, they raise their right arms and shouted, Heil, Hitler!

Several older people shook their heads but didn’t say anything. When I got home and asked my father about what I say, he said I didn’t need to worry about them.

Voices of the Third Reich

But there was a reason to worry. When times are good, the vast majority of people stay away from extremist politics. After the stock market crashed in 1929, popularity with the Communists and National Socialists surged. By 1933 the Nazis would be the largest party in Parliament.

“In the end there were no longer political parties; only demonstrations and assemblies in one hall or another. All the young men were involved. That’s when I joined the Nazi Party in 1930. Conservative politics were too tame; only for old men who’d lost their fire.”

Theo Hupfauer. German citizen.

Voices of the Third Reich.

On the opposite end sat Germany’s industrial and financial elite who navigated the chaos with remarkable flexibility. During the hyperinflation in 1923, many industrialists actually benefited, wiping out debts while acquiring real assets. They were increasingly aligned with conservative and nationalist forces, seeing socialism and labor unrest a threat to unrestricted profit.

And that’s really the thread tying it all together: contradiction. Weimar Germany was progressive and reactionary, liberated and anxious, creative and violent. All at the same time. You had cutting-edge science next to political street brawls, sexual openness next to rising puritan backlash, democratic reforms alongside growing authoritarian temptation. It wasn’t a stable equilibrium. It was a balancing act on a knife’s edge.

One of the most polarizing questions of the era was: what is German culture? The NSDAP appropriated German institutions like the beer-hall and sports club for its own dictatorship.

Weimar didn’t just collapse economically or politically: it was culturally indicted, judged, and ultimately destroyed by something far darker that promised order at the cost of everything that had made the era so explosively alive.

“Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Times”

(c) Jay Daniels. All rights reserved.

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