Why did culture and the arts flourish during the Weimar era?

Typical 1920’s radio sets

August Sander “unemployed man,” Cologne, 1928

The Leica Camera

The U.S. Eastman Kodak camera brought photography to the masses but the German manufactured Leica camera ushered in the age of photojournalism.

Photographer August Sander aimed to capture Germans and humanity in all its diversity focusing on Realism in the same way as 19th Century French Novelist Emile Zola.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Bertold Brecht

Kurt Weill

Hannah Hoch

George Grosz

Bauhaus architecture

Erich Mendelsohn’s Universum Movie Theatre Berlin

Walter Gropius Bauhaus building

Siemensstadt

Horseshoe Berlin Britz housing development

Thomas Mann.

Major works during Weimar era:•Reflections of an Unpolitical Man•Death in Venice•The Magic Mountain

Reintroduced the concept of Bildung:

The belief in self-cultivation that would come through engagement with great works of culture.

Believed people could only achieve Bildung in the framework of the Republic.

Disciple of Nietsch

Philosopher Martin Heidegger

Illustrated weeklies from Weimar Germany.

Examples of political posters from the Weimar Era

Other notable Weimar cultural icons

Marlene Dietrich Arnold Schoenburg Greta Garbo