"Vertigo: The Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany"

This is an interesting longread about the Weimar Republic (Germany from the end of WWI until the mid-1930s).  It is a richly detailed book, and thus TMI for my personal needs, so I alternately browsed and read in depth various sections.

After WWI Germany entered a state of turbulent politics and economics.  There was civic turmoil because of internal dissension re the defeat in the war, combined with frankly chaotic economics leading to the famous hyperinflation.  Yet during this period there were major developments in lifestyle, employment (invention of typists and secretaries), fashion, sexual mores, architecture, automobiles, and design (Bauhaus). This book tries to cover as much of that as possible.  Herewith some excerpts and thoughts:

The Charleston dance was a life-changer for social interactions.  "The fact that one could dance the Charleston alone had consequences for the self-empowerment of the individual; to be able to join in solo on the dancefloor was nothing less than revolutionary." (xvii) (discussed in depth in Chapter 7)

Filmmaker Billy Wilder started his adult life as a gigolo in the dance halls of Berlin. (176)  After the war ended, Germans were crazed with the need to dance:

"Here and there two young girls dance together, sometimes even two young men; it's all the same to them.  They do it to the exotic sounds of the gramophone, which is fitted with robust needles to make it as loud as possible, and it rings out its shimmies, foxtrots and one-steps, its double foxtrots, African shimmies, java dances and polka creolas..." (180)

"The shimmy brought an unimagined freedom to the parquet.  Now people danced almost on the spot to whipped-up rhythms without touching one another... Where in the old days it would have been unthinkable to step on a dance floor without having first taken dancing classes, the new dances could only be learned by imitation..." (180) [followed by several pages of discussion of the shimmy]

"The rapturous experience of community in the ballroom grew even more intense in 1925 when the Charleston conquered the dance floors...  The Charleston turned dancers into acrobatic marionettes... The gramophone allowed people to dance at home and in the countryside... The Charleston was an uplifting dance.  It fired up the ego and inspired people to express their own emotions through dance.... The Charleston was particularly enjoyable for women.  They didn't have to be led, and were usually the more active, exuberant participants..." (186)

It was during this time period that "the weekend" was invented.  Two days off from work was revolutionary.

The cinema presented Charlie Chaplin and Marlene Dietrich, and was the top paid-for leisure activity.  "In the early 1920s most people didn't go to see a particular film, they just went to the cinema.  For that reason, many cinema owners didn't think it necessary to set a particular time for the screening to start.  Films were just shown one after the other, in any order.  People came and went... and watched for as long as they felt like it.  If the projectionist wanted to go home early he just played the film speeded up; silent films can take that.  More importantly there was no need for the audience to listen, so they made any amount of noise, chatted, applauded or commented bawdily on the action." (210)

Several chapters in the book discuss the great depression of the 1930s, when the country owed "reparations" to the West.  There were runs on the banks when hyperinflation went out of control.  Unemployment reached 30 to 40 percent of the population.  Then came the rise of the Nazis and of antisemitism.  Also major rifts developed between urban and rural populations.  There were calls for "an uprising by the countryside against the city... 

"...what one saw in the city was nothing but libertinism, women's emancipation, coarse language, and disrespectful irony...  Until the beginning of the depression these ingredients had constituted the charm of the liberal-left-wing Berlin cultural and media scene... but since optimism had fled from public life, the modernity of Berlin's cultural life seemed to have become more exclusive.  For those threatened by decline, the modern age felt less like freedom for all and more like pleasure for a few.  That intensified into the delusional claim that the modern arts were the destructive work of a corrupt elite that wanted to drive the soul out of the people  Hitler's campaign against 'degenerate art' would later be of prime importance for his success, because it included an assurance that the future volksstaat would be geared towards the taste of the people..." (316)

"... listening and looking more closely one could discern the gulfs of silence dividing society.  People liked to be among their own kind and held the rest in contempt,  Given the muddled state of things, even fewer people than usual were in a position to take anything meaningful from a discussion with people of a different opinion.  'Unity' and 'unanimity' were yearning words on everyone's lips, although there were only two ways of achieving either: through determined silence or brutal violence."  (330)

Most Germans had never learned to argue constructively.  They had been raised under the control of a Kaiser, and had done whatever they were told to do.  "When they jumped into freedom, few understood what it meant to take responsibility for oneself and consult with others in the abstract framework of democratic representation." (330)

"Opponents of the Berlin cultural scene had long asserted that it was indeed an island, but every milieu, every newspaper formed an island in itself, with its own opinion makers, whistleblowers and regular readers - an island where the opinions of outsiders were unwelcome.  Every political trend, every little party, the tiniest intellectual village had its own newspaper..  A form of the infamous 'filter bubble' or 'echo chamber' through which people can become intellectually isolated on digital networks in the present day also existed in Weimar Germany.  Reader and newspaper existed in a mutual relationship of confirmation bias; the newspaper wrote what the reader wanted to hear, and the reader stayed loyal as long as the paper didn't trouble him with unwelcome news." (332)

Three weeks after the 1933 election the members of the new Reichstag held their second meeting.  "On the agenda was Hitler's 'Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and Reich', also known as the Enabling Act.  This was intended to give the government the right to make laws independent of parliament and without regard for the constitution and constitutional rights..."  After a period of violence in the streets "the Enabling Act was passed with the necessary two-thirds majority, and democracy was abolished in an apparently democratic way."  (372)

The parallels between Weimar Germany and modern America are uncanny and deeply disturbing.  John Farrier, if you are on the acquisitions committee at your library, please advise them to consider this one.