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- [00:01]
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- [01:30]
Podcast Host Spencer Mizzen
Weimar is a small German city, yet it looms large in European history. In the 1920s, it was synonymous with liberalism, internationalism, and the fine arts. Yet within a decade, many of its residents had embraced Nazism, and Hitler was professing his love for the city. In this episode of the History Extra Podcast, Katza Hoyer speaks suspensimism about how the city that gave its name to Germany's great social democratic experiment succumbed to tyranny.
- [02:00]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
Hello Karcher, I wonder if I could start by pointing you in the direction of a quote you cite in your new book on Weimar. The quote is from Roman Herzog, who was president of Germany in the 1990s, and in it Herzog says, weimar is Germany in a nutshell, a town in which not only culture and thought were at home, but also philistinism and barbarism. Why is that, Katja? Why in the first half of the 20th century did the fate of this smallish city in the center of Germany become emblematic representative of the fate of an entire nation?
- [02:46]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
That is a very good question, because at first sight, there's nothing particularly special about Weimar. Quite a small town. I mean, it's picturesque Quaint enough with sort of cobbled streets and timber framed houses and all that. But it isn't as such kind of a large city or something where kind of big events happened in the past. What it is, though, it's always been regarded as a sort of culture center in the heart of Germany. It's right almost exactly in the center of the country and famous people have always been drawn to it. So you have for example, Johan Wolfgang van Goethe, who's kind of the national poet, I would say, perhaps comparable to what Shakespeare a means to someone from England. I guess it's, it's good is that to Germany. His friend Schiller, who was also a famous poet, lived there. You know, you have sort of Bach and Nietzsche and, and great thinkers, European thinkers, all spending time in Weimar through the centuries. And so after the First World War, when Germany is really having a deep think about itself and trying to reset and become a new country, that appeals. They're kind of looking to a legacy that isn't Prussian and militarist. And, and Berlin had capital of Prussia before it became the capital of Germany. And so it didn't quite seem right when you want a fresh start, apart from the fact that Berlin also wasn't particularly safe in 1918, 1919 after the First World War. But it didn't seem quite right to just carry on as before because something had clearly gone wrong. And so Weimar appeals as a place of civility and culture and sort of the ideals really of what it means to be a sort of German thinker. And that's why so many decision makers in the 1920s imprint on it, you know, all the way from kind of socialists and communists who are interested in it as a cultural hub, through to democrats and avant garde culture, all the way to Adolf Hitler who visits the town over 40 times because he too sees it as a kind of point to relaunch. So that's, that's what Roman Herzog was talking about when he said basically you get everything in that time. It represents everything that Germany is and did in the interwar period.
- [04:52]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
Sure. Could we talk about the history of Weimar for the First World War in a bit more detail then, please? Because I guess most of our listeners will associate Weimar with the famous and ultimately ill fated attempt at constitutional democracy in Germany in the 1920s, between the end of the First World War and the rise of the Nazis. But before, as you just said, the city had already acquired a sort of reputation as a kind of a cultural capital, as an epicenter of art and architecture. How did it Acquire that reputation.
- [05:27]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
Sort of something that really took place over time, I think. You know, once you had. Goethe in particular, had a huge impact because he lived there for a long time. He died in Weimar, and he was also the director of the theater then, as he's one of Germany's most kind of foremost poets, but also he wrote plays and, you know, he had a huge impact on German culture and that legacy. You can still see that today when you go to Weimar. Most tourists in Weimar, and it is a tourist town, don't go there for the kind of history that I describe in my book, but they go there because they to be where Goethe was and where he lived. It's a bit like Stratford, I guess, in. In Britain, Stratford upon Avon in that sense. As, you know, the people want to go to the heart of what German culture is. So once you have that set up sort of with Goethe as its center, it becomes very attractive to other thinkers over, you know, the sort of decades and centuries. And you get all sorts of people, you know, that I mentioned before, sort of. And also, you know, people like List and musicians, artists, who are drawn by this kind of idea that they're in the place where Goethe was. They go there. And you still find this in the 1920s when kind of artists and architects and other people are looking for somewhere to reset kind of the things that, in their minds, made German culture great. And that, I think, is the reason why this kind of image of Weimar as the locus of German culture perpetuates itself almost across time. Even today, when you go there and when you go to events and things, you can see how some very notable retirees still go to Weimar because they spend kind of a life that they regard themselves as important, and then they go and they want to retire in a place where other famous people before them have sort of gone. It still works today, that sort of appeal, I guess.
- [07:13]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
And as you said there in the 1920s, the city's status is kind of cultural center in Jord, and artists and architects were drawn to the city in that decade. Can you give us some examples of that, please? Am I right in saying this became a center of the Bauhaus movement?
- [07:30]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
Yeah, that's absolutely right. Is one of the things I talk about at length in the book, because I think it's interesting that you have the Bauhaus movement, which is still incredibly influential today. It's where we get things like prefabricated housing, things like IKEA furniture, you know, kind of the idea that somebody designs something really thoughtfully, but then it gets mass produced and everyone can use it. And it's not as expensive as kind of, you know, artisan products that get made by hand. That kind of stuff all comes from the. From the Bauhaus movement. And when they first set out in the 1920s, again, the thought is, you know, where should they recreate kind of this new German culture, this new way of living being, having the objects around you? And again, you know, you have Walter Gropius, already a big name in German architecture. He's sort of set up in Berlin originally, but he also thinks, no, Berlin isn't the place for it. Let's go to Weimar and sets up the Bauhaus school in Weimar and then draw some very, very famous names like Kandinsky and Klee and others basically to Weimar, because they follow him and they follow cultural reputation that Weimar has. So he creates in this small, quaint town in the center of Germany that's not near anywhere. It's literally right in the middle between sort of Munich and Hamburg. Frankfurt is three hours away. Berlin is two and a half hours away. It's virtually in the middle of nowhere. And he manages to attract this kind of really influential circle of international architects and artists to that place to kind of launch a new type of German culture from there.
- [09:00]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
Do you get a sense that the people of Weimar were proud of the city's status as the kind of metropolitan face of Germany's democratic experiment in the 1920s? And the fact that these artists are flocking to the city in this period,
- [09:15]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
you get a very mixed response. Some people are really intrigued by that. Also the fact that German democracy is set up there in 1919. So the first elected parliament meets there, which is why we still call it the Weimar Republic today. It's a massive spectacle, and people are very acutely aware of the fact that they suddenly find themselves in the middle of things. It's quite a sleepy, conservative town, and suddenly journalists flock in, reporters are everywhere taking pictures. You know, the. The kind of Vima townscape is suddenly in the national newspapers and even international newspapers. I mean, I found reports from the New York Times and other places that suddenly, you know, report from Weimar. So some people are quite excited by that and they think, you know, that this is kind of putting their. Their town on the map, as it were. But a lot of other people, because it is quite a conservative place and because it's associated with German eye cult, this new quite avant garde modernist thing doesn't belong in Weimar. And so right from the beginning, Rios is kind of describing how he pokes this hornet's nest, as he puts it, kind of, you know, by putting a very modernist movement in a very conservative town that is proud of its history, that creates a conflict right from the beginning as well, especially as the types of students that he attracts. I mean, first of all, the first intake has got more women than. Than men, which is unusual. And then you also get lots of international students. You have lots of Jewish people involved in the movement. It's quite internationalist, modernist, urban thing to plunk into the middle of a kind of small town that sees itself as the guardian of traditional German culture. And so people regard these students who go sort of skinny dipping in the river ILM and stuff like that, you know, and then they have this hippie esque, almost proto hippie esque appearance. They walk around in these long coats and sandals and things and you know, people look at them and think this isn't proper and you know, have this kind of immediate hostility there as well. So you get both are kind of depending on, on who you at. Basically some people are excited by it, other people think, no, it's completely going in the wrong direction. This is not what Weimar is about.
- [11:19]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
One of the questions you pose in the book is how did Germany turn in a few short years from one of the world's most liberal democracies to a genocidal dictatorship? And I guess nowhere was this journey more stark than in Weimar, as you note in the book, which appears to have embraced Nazism as enthusiastically as anywhere else in Germany. When, for you, did this process begin? When did the cracks in this great social democratic experiment begin to appear in Weimar?
- [11:51]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
Well, it's quite difficult to pin on a particular moment, I think even in 1919, when the Republic is founded there. And you get this because people are worried about communist uprisings and other people who might disturb this kind of assembly that is set up in 1919 to write the new constitution. There's this cordon around Weimar military court and they try and protect it from outsiders. So suddenly the town of Weimar is sort of cut off from the outside world. And whilst this democracy is being set up in the middle, even then you get people having reservations about that and being sort of skeptical of what this new Germany is like. So one example I give is the. Is the sister of Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous philosopher. His sister lives in Weimar, Elizabeth. And she, right from the beginnings, for instance, she is against the fact that women are given the right to vote, which is the first time that you have a female franchise in Germany, as the same across various European countries after the First World War. And she campaigns against that. And she says this isn't right, this is not what society is about. She's very old at this point and kind of believes in this old system, this kind of imperial Germany that she grew up in. So that reservation is there from the beginning among some people. Having said that, voting figures are very high, turnout is very high. Women go voting in large numbers. People are also excited about this new democracy from the beginning. You have this sort of dual track really, of people who believe in it and people who want to hold on to a more conservative world. And then because I think the Weimar system doesn't really ever fully kind of take root in the sense that it feels stable. So you have right at the beginning a lot of violence. As I say, the assembly has to be protected. You have sort of the. The early economic crises, hyperinflation. I described that quite a bit in 1923. It just never ever settles in that sense. And even in called golden years in the middle, when there's a bit of stability because American money is being poured into Germany, people still feel that, yes, it is settling, but there's something quite fragile about that system. And people do know that there's quite a thin veneer between them and the abyss. So that's why the subtitle of my book is Life on the Edge of Catastrophe. And that's actually what it feels like to people, that they're permanently negotiating that. So this idea that somebody one day might come along and create a more stable thing with a dictatorship or some more autocratic system, that appeals to many people in Germany right from the beginning. I think it's also because the democratic culture is still quite young. But again, Elizabeth Nietzsche is one example where she constantly looks to Italy, where Mussolini, much earlier than Hitler, sets up his dictatorship. And many people are looking towards that as kind of like an example of what should happen in Germany. So that thought is there from the beginning and it just. The balance between that and the people who are still excited about democracy shifts over time, I think quite gradually.
- [14:41]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
How did the economic shocks of the 1920s affect Bayou Minu? The hyperinflation and the mass unemployment, did that have an impact on the city as the 1920s progressed?
- [14:52]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
Yeah, I think massively. I mean, I try and trace that a little bit in my book by looking at the actual lives of people who lived in Weimar. So I've got a kind of cast of characters, if you will, who I follow through the book and the ideas that you can really see in different lives, what the impact of these, these big things, big developments that we normally look at actually is. And at the center of my book is Carl Virus, who's a shopkeeper and runs kind of a stationary shop right in the town center. And he is really interesting with the hyperinflation because he sort of says it's an absolute madness. He goes and tries to trade kind of typewriters which he sold in his shop and he says suddenly they have to put so many zeros on it that they're not even sure how to report it to the tax authorities. He's just saying the numbers are even completely ludicrous. And he's putting signs saying, oh, you can buy this typewriter for I don't know how many million today. Take home immediately, you know, because if you leave it, if say you buy it and then you come back two days later to pay for it, it'll be like twice that price again. So it's just absolutely mad. And they try and get through it somehow. And he still writes in his diary how they went hiking and how they did things together as a couple. He buys a used bicycle for something like 2 million in that year because he kind of thinks I might as well because later on the same money would have got him like an egg. And so, you know, it's an interest how people try and cling on to little kind of remnants of normality whilst financially the rugs pulled out from under them.
- [16:22]
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- [17:47]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
You come up with some extraordinary facts in the book, especially in relation to the way that the people of Weimar embraced Nazism at the end of the 1920s and the early 1930s. You say that the Hitler Youth received its name in Weimar, that the Hitler salute was first presented to the public in Weimar, that support for the Nazis in elections was higher in Weimar than was the average across Germany. Do you get the sense that the Nazis particularly targeted Weimar because of its status in the 1920s and its position in the republic and its attempted democracy in Germany?
- [18:23]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
They did. I mean, it's quite obvious in the way that they talk about it. So Hitler makes a deliberate point of appearing regularly in the theater in Weimar, which is where the Republic was founded. That's where the delegates met in 1919 to draft the constitution and sort of decl. Republic. And Hitler goes in that very same space and then you can see his sort of henchmen describing that and saying haha. In the place where once Friedrich Ebert, the first president of Weimar spoke and founded the Republic, now stands out of Hitler on the stage, you know, and destroys this very experiment. And it's actually Hitler himself who coined the term Weimar Republic, which many people don't realize. He it's actually called the German Reichstill. And very few people kind of use that terminology that we now use. And then Hitler calls it the Weimar Republic to almost sneer at it, to say it's not a German thing, it's not the German Reich, it's a Weimar thing, as in this spirit of kind of liberal democracy is wrong. And that's what he wants to override by reclaiming Weimar for himself. But yes, it's absolutely that status of being the culture capital. The idea that whoever controls it kind of controls German culture. And German thought is certainly around. And Hitler also just really likes Weimar. It's safe, it's conservative. He even describes how he can just sit in a cafe somewhere, he doesn't have to have it cleared by his men for security purposes because there are very few communists in Weimar. It's not an urban kind of workers town and you know, elsewhere, like stones will get thrown at his car or he'll get attacked or people try and assassinate him. And in Weimar you can sit in a cafe and chat to people as they come around. And so he spends a lot of private time there as well, which I find quite interesting when I was researching it, that he just goes for walks in the park and sits in cafes and talks to people. He likes Weimar, basically. He declares at one point to one of his minions there, I love Weimar. I just love it. And that's, I think, quite remarkable as well, that it hasn't got the status of, say, Munich, which is seen as the. The capital of the Nazi movement, but it's still hugely important to the. To Hitler personally as kind of like almost like a private retreat and somewhere to. To relaunch the movement from. And just one thing to add maybe on that. You get six Nazis elected into the local state parliament. So Daima is the capital of Thuringia, of the state of Thuringia. And that parliament in Thuringia, the state Parliament has got six Nazis in very early on in 1924, when the movement's still very small and they're required to form a majority, even though there's only six of them. And because they say, well, we will tolerate this conservative government and allow it to function, but only if you legalize the party again. It had been banned after Hitler tried to overthrow the government in 1923. And so Thuringia is one of the very first places where the movement gets re. Legalized after Hitler's coup attempt in 1923. It becomes like a safe haven when the party is still banned kind of everywhere else. One of the Nazi sort of henchmen at one point says, actually Thuringia has kind of replaced Bavaria as the. As the kind of safe haven of the party. And it's not a surprise that Hitler kind of goes there so often and relaunches this movement from there. The very first Nazi party rally, the proper sort of big ones, happens not in Nuremberg, where the later famous ones happened, but in Weimar in 1926. And that's indeed, as you say, where the Hitler Youth is set up and other things get decided. So it's an important launch pad for the Nazi movement in the mid-1920s.
- [21:45]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
As you've already said in your book, you very much tried to tell the story of Weimar through the experiences of its residents, the people who sort of lived through this extraordinary, turbulent period in its history. You've mentioned Carl Weirich. I wonder if you could also talk about someone else, somebody from a bit more of an exalted background who features in your book quite heavily, and that's Harry Graf Kessler. I mean, guess Kessler's experiences reveal how the idealism of the early 1920s were shattered by the march of Nazism and how idealistic liberal people were placing kind of an intolerable position towards the end of that decade. Can you tell us a little bit about him? Introduce us to him a little bit, please?
- [22:27]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
Yeah. He's one of my favorite characters in the book because he's just quite funny and sardonic in lots of ways sometimes. But he's basically, as you can guess by his name, Harry Count Kessler. He's an Anglo German count, very international figure, like a dandy kind of figure, if you will, kind of very elegant man who is just as much at home at court in Britain as he is kind of in a beer hall in Germany. He talks to people, he's involved in lots of international kind of negotiations. He's a bit of a diplomat as well. And before the first World War, Weimar was again supposed to be the hub of German culture. Before the war even started. He was part of this kind of new Weimar idea. He wanted to set up a new German high culture there. So he's very attached to the town, even though he's not from there and has a house there, villa. So he's an interesting kind of almost outsider insider figure because he travels internationally. I don't think he falls for the same things that Germans do at the time because he does sit in a barber's chair in Paris or in a bar in London as much as he is actually in Germany. So he often gets like outside feedback and isn't completely immersed in this in the same way that Germans are. He hasn't got this kind of boiling frog phenomenon where you just get used to more and more nationalism, more and more violence, but actually is going in and out. He's also gay, which is an interesting dimension of his lifestyle office because he's not completely, you know, sort of bragging about it because it's illegal in Germany at the time. He doesn't. He's not a card carrying campaigner for, for gay rights or anything like that, but he does because of that. He has quite a different kind of lifestyle from the traditional family orientated, conservative way that a lot of Germans live. And so because of that, his diary, which he keeps throughout the whole time is a really interesting source because you get somebody who was there, but who observes things with a kind of a bit of detachment, but also this kind of dry humor that comes through all the time. And what was interesting to me is that he was friends with Elisabeth Nietzsche, with Nietzsche's sister, who was extremely conservative and old fashioned and becomes increasingly nationalistic her entire household. In the end, she brags as brown as a Nazi, and she's the only nationalist that she puts to try and reassure Kessler that she's not a Nazi herself. But he stays friends with her, even though he's very liberal and very democratic. Mind actually worries about her going down that route. And that, to me, is interesting when we live in a world again today where people quite often cut off entire friendships and relationships because, you know, you drift apart politically from someone and you feel you can't even talk to them anymore because they vote for a different party or are on the other side of the cultural divide or something. Those two stay friends all the way through, and the letters between them are absolutely fascinating exchanges between kind of two sides of the. Of elite circles and how they respond to the events around them.
- [25:17]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
Now, I guess one of the most emotionally charged passages of the book describes an episode that occurred after Weimar had been taken by American forces right at the end of the Second World War. Just a few miles away from Weimar was Buchenwald, one of the largest concentration camps on German soil. In the final days of the war, the U.S. troops, as you relate, made the residents of Weimar visit camp to witness the scene of these sort of unfavorable, unfathomable atrocities that occurred there as you described. Torture, medical experiments, mass executions. Did your research into this, this particular episode kind of alter your thinking on the conduct of the people of Weimar during the Second World War, on their kind of culpability for what had happened at Buchenwald, which, after all, was right on their doorstep?
- [26:10]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
Yeah, it was a really interesting question to me right from the beginning when I started researching this. How much march did the people of Weimar actually know about this camp? It was virtually on their doorstep. And also it's up on a. So Weimar is in a sort of valley on a plane, and then the concentration camp is on the only hill that's right on the outskirts on the. On the Ettesberg. So this is a place where people used to go hiking, you know, on kind of Sunday outings. In the winter, they go up there to ski and sledge. And so, you know, there's no way that you can build something there on that scale hill, and people don't know it's there. So that was. That was the assumption with which I sort of started researching this. And then the Americans kind of think the same thing when they arrive there and they see the absolute horrors and they look down kind of from the hill towards the town of Weimar, and they think, how can people Live next to a place where tens of thousands of people were murdered, their bodies burned in crematoria. You know, all of the horrors that you just described and not know this. So the Americans assume that they have to show this to people to AC their response. And it was filmed, the whole thing. The Americans filmed kind of the responses as the people walked through the camp and also to make sure that people don't say afterwards, oh, this is all Allied propaganda. You know, they have to see it before the camp gets cleared. And that moment is so interesting because you do see the responses. And Karl Weyrich, my protagonist, is one of them. I couldn't believe my luck as a historian when I saw in his diary that he records that moment and how he felt when he was walking around the site. And as he's kind of your everyday German, that that's why I put him in the center of the book. He's kind of a lower middle class, ordinary guy. His response is particularly interesting and he is shocked by it. He does talk about in this diary kind of ways in private mode and he knows nobody's going to see it. He does talk about our German downfall and, and kind of how disgusted he is and how it fills his heart with disgust to see all of that even later on. He goes and visits it once it's become a museum, you know, so it's not, he's not somebody who shies away from the idea that this is. Is a German responsibility. But he also doesn't go there and say this is my responsibility. I somehow contributed to that. That doesn't happen either. And that was really interesting to me as well. And even whilst this history is going on because he, he does a lot of hiking. He's a very typical Thuringian man in that response, lots of hiking going on. And he actually explains how even whilst the camp is there, he goes up on the Eddberg and he's frustrated with the idea that all the footpaths are closed off off because they obviously tried to keep people away from the camp. And he just says, oh, that stupid concentration camp is there. So now the Ettersberg is just kind of ruined for us to hike on. And it's interesting that in his mind this is a place where communists get punished, where kind of troublemakers go. It's almost like a prison basically in, in people's minds. So they have a notion that this isn't the good place, that something bad happens there. I found lots of evidence of children in Weimar taunting each other and saying, oh, if you don't behave. You go up to Buchenwald, you know, people knew it was there and it was a place of punishment. What I don't think people were fully aware of, because they weren't in it, is the absolute abject brutality of what was going on there. I don't think that people realized that people were tortured in there or that lots of kind of wanton brutality was going on there. I don't think that was the reality of it. I don't think people thought about. But that's not an excuse. People make a choice, a conscious choice, not to think about it too much. They do know that people get taken there and that later on Jewish people get taken there on mass as well. They watch them arrive. Buchenwald doesn't have a train station, so they get taken to Weimar itself and then put on lorries and everyone sees what's going on. So they knew, but they chose not to look too closely. And that was probably what I think applies to the majority of German civilians in lots of ways. They knew bad stuff was going on, their neighbors were vanishing, but chose not to look too closely or think about it too closely.
- [30:03]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
What happened to Weimar in the immediate aftermath of the war? Was it in any way mark type for special treatment because of his status in the interwar period period?
- [30:11]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
So Weimar is in an interesting place, same as the rest of Thuringia, in that it is conquered and occupied by the Americans and then handed over to the Soviets as part of the post war arrangement. And that changeover makes a huge difference to. To the lives of people because the Americans initially have got this really kind of strict and almost idealistic approach of we want to denazify the country properly and they are very harsh to start with and with the German population. But then they very quickly ease off and decide that actually German Germany needs to rebuild itself, you know, in the emergent Cold War at this point, to try and basically be an ally. And because that area gets handed over to the Soviets who take the view that everyone who wears a uniform, anyone who's ever been part of any Nazi organization that's millions of people, are kind of Nazi sympathizers and need to be punished for it, that changes everything. And Carl is a classic example of that. Where his life would have taken. His post war life would have taken a very different turn had the state in the American zone. It does get special treatment in the sense that Buchenwald itself becomes a national memorial for the gdr, for the East German state once it's set up. And so that's kind of seen as a symbol of the anti fascist spirit, as it's called afterwards, kind of is supposed to infuse East Germany and the gdr. So they make Buchenwald a memorial to Nazi crime times to say we're different, we're setting this up so that people can see it. So to give you one extreme example, the leaders of Buchenwald, the commandant and his wife, the Koch family, they were extremely brutal. And one of the things that was found on site was a lampshade that was supposed to have been made by human skin. And that lampshade was actually exhibited during the GDI years. So people who went to Buchenwald saw that and it was supposed to show people how depraved this Nazi regime was after the Berlin Wall came down. That was immediately removed and a completely different exhibition being put in place. And so that's an example of, you know, how Buchenwald specifically became a sort of central place, I would say, for memory culture in the, in the gdr.
- [32:17]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
How do the people of Weimar themselves look back on this period of history from the vantage point of the 21st century?
- [32:24]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
Well, for a long time they tried to go back to being, and they still do, I suppose, in many ways to be in this culture place. So as I mentioned earlier, the idea that tor explorers still go there because they want to see the places where Goethe stayed, they want to see his house, they go there for the same reasons that people did pre World War I. So in that regard, Weimar still has the same reputation in lots of ways as being a sort of hub of German culture, high culture, and Bauhaus has added to that. So despite the fact that the Bauhaus was actually driven away from Weimar, kind of expelled from it, almost because of conservative opposition to it, despite the that Bauhaus is very much part of the landscape in Weimar today. When you go there, there's a huge Bauhaus museum. The little university that it has kind of like a college is also called the Bauhaus University. You know, they're very proud of this. The fact that the Bauhaus started there, that's part of it. And it's only now, I would say in recent years that it's begun to think about its role in the Nazi system as well. So there is now a little exhibition, for example, about the forced labor that took place in Weimar and the many thousands of people who died in the, in the factories there, who forced to work in them previously. A lot of the Nazi buildings. Weimar is interesting in that it was because of its status. It was kind of radically changed in the Nazi era. They built these kind of giant party complexes there, like a, like a local Nazi forum. So huge symmetrical kind of colonnades and a great big people's hall where you were supposed to have tens of thousands of people in there listening to speakers. That that people's hall is now a shopping center. There isn't a plaque or anything in there that tells you what it was. And the actual kind of party buildings are now used by the Thoringian state administration. You know, just painted in a different color. They're kind of quite colorful now, but you can still see the sort of neoclassical architecture of Nazism there that was kind of supposed to be blended into the background for a while whilst now I think Weimar is a bit in the. In recent years, Weimar has become a lot more open about that. So for example, there was an exhibition quite recently about how the Bauhaus and Nazism actually intermerged or intertwined much more than people thought. And that was kind of a groundbreaking exhibition. Quite controversial as well for that reason. But it's getting there. I think it's acknowledging that more. What they still don't want, I think, is people going there for that reason and kind of seeing it as a sort of hub of Nazism. And the focus is still very much on the culture and on Weimar as the starting point of Weimar Republic. On that democratic history.
- [34:50]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
A note for our listeners just to say that if you'd like to hear more from Katja on German history on the History Extra podcast, then you can check out an episode I recorded with her recently on the German statesman Otto von Bismarck. I'll le the link to that episode in the episode description. One final question for you, Katya. You've written that no amount of history, tradition or culture is sufficient on its own to safeguard against the takeover by a ruthless totalitarian ideology. There seems to lie in those words a warning for our own type that we shouldn't succumb to complacency, that we shouldn't, you know, assume that the catastrophe that befell Weimar couldn't happen to us. I mean, do you see it that way? Is that what you meant by those words?
- [35:47]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
Well, it's certainly a warning in there because I think people thought after the First World War, this catastrophe is over. It was supposed to be the war to end all wars. And then a new democracy was set up with all kind of, you know, bells and whistles and this kind of whole idea that this is a new era and it starts and just One generation later, you get the Second World War and, you know, the idea that the kind of spirit of Weimar, as people even called it at the time, this kind of cultured civil spirit of Germanness is supposed to infuse this new state was almost seen as a safeguard against kind of slipping back into more autocratic and militaristic cultures. And I think that there's something quite disturbing about the idea that people at the time didn't see that coming. And yet most people either tolerated or supported what was going on. There's very, very little resistance. I make a big point out of that in the book as well. It's not like people sit there and they're absolutely shocked and astonished about what happens after 1933. It's almost a boiling frog sort of scenario. They sit in the middle of it and these things happen around them. And bit by bit, people are so focused on their own lives that bit by bit, they tolerate the violence, just the unspeakable nature of what the Nazis do, because they are so focused on dealing with their own lives. And I think there's a danger again today where with the wars that are going on with. With the economic problems that we have, with this kind of pessimism that is around where people are looking at their own lives, how to save themselves, their family, you know, how to set themselves up safely, that we lose sight of the things that are happening around us and, you know, the kind of responsibility that we have as individuals and as societies to make sure that we stay an open and democratic society. So that that's certainly. I mean, I don't make a big point out of saying the word then is. Is what it is today, a fundamentally different world, even though it looks quite similar in lots of ways. So we're not seeing a repeat of history, but I think there's still a warning there for us to be kind of alert to the things that are happening around us and the personal and collective responsibilities that we have.
- [37:47]
Interviewer Spencer Mizzen
Katya, thank you so much for that. Thank you for sparing the time to talk to me today.
- [37:51]
Katja Hoyer, Historian and Author
Thank you.
- [37:54]
Podcast Host Spencer Mizzen
That was Katja Heuer speaking to Spencer Mizzen. Katja is a German British historian and writer, and her new. Her new book, Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, tells the extraordinary story of a city that has been described as Germany in a nutshell.
- [38:15]
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