#Weimarer republik

[josh-lanceero]

more old non-bi folk more

[spring-maidens]

"Milieu: Gay Berlin" - an exploration of LGBT+ identities in the Weimar Republic (1920's Germany).

Based on "Gay Berlin" by Robert Beachy.

Did you know the roaring 20s have *always* been queer, both 100 years ago and now?

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Note: I didn't have enough space to cover Dr. Magnus Hirschfield properly but he will be the subject of my next infographic. Dr. Hirschfield was a gay Jewish doctor and activist who created the first medical institute (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) for LGBT+ people. He pioneered transgender care!

[dashalbrundezimmer]

administration building of the regionalverband ruhr // essen südviertel

architect: alfred fischer

completion: 1929

the administration building, which was renovated a few years ago, is a successful example of new construction in the ruhr region. the mixture of new objectivity and expressionism creates a complex that is still modern in its design today.

[justablix]

thinking about her (Magnus Hirschfeld's „Institut für Sexualwissenschaften” [institute for sexual sciences])

[subtile-jagden]

Rudolf Berthold (Part 3)

Disclaimer: Now starts a part of German (and European) history that is highly controversial. The period shortly before the end of the war and the years afterwards were a mess of revolutions, fighting, terrorism and murder. Opinions of how good/bad it was depend on political/ideological convictions. For the sake of keeping it short, I will simplify and only mention events that are necessary to tell Bertholds story.

During the last month of the war Berthold still had hope that he will be able to return to the front: “I want to go back out to the frontlines! If only I had my healthy bones – but I can still do it. As long as the battle rages everyone with experience belongs out there.” But his health was too unstable for even his iron will to make a return possible. He returned to his home and waited. For what he wasn´t sure. 

In November the situation at the front and in Germany worsened and Marine troops started mutinies. Revolutions broke out, inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Berthold was a fervent monarchist and held on to his Kaiser and the established social order. “Overthrow! Constitutional change! In a few days, what strong men have built up over centuries will be destroyed. The people have been seduced. Doubts are cast on the army. We're still far in enemy territory and we're supposed to surrender? Madness!”. Bertholds opinion on all that was happening is clear. 

After the Armistice in November a semi-civil war broke out in the bigger German cities. Communists, Socialists, Bolsheviks on the left; Nationalists and Monarchists on the right; Social Democrats in the middle. Mix in some Anarchists and foreign agents and the disaster was perfect. The soldiers returning from the front were being pursued by all sides to join. By many they were not treated well, their uniforms were ripped and they were called to throw down their weapons and join the fight against militarism. But many soldiers were still loyal to the emperor and did not want to accept the looming Republic.

 Especially at the end of 1918 to early 1919 the communists were very powerful. The left-wing Spartakus movement tried to overthrow the government in Berlin and took over Munich. Separatists in Western Germany called for independence of the Rhineland.

Berthold spend the rest of 1918 depressed at home. He felt angry, devastated and useless but he stayed true to his convictions: “The oath of allegiance I once swore I keep for life. A life that now lies so dark before me!”. But his mood and his perspectives changed when more and more Freikorps units (mostly right-wing paramilitary units, used by the Social Democratic government to defend itself and suppress the communist/Bolshevik uprisings) were established. He saw that there was still fight in some men.

The newly formed Reichswehr (official military of the new German state) offered the Hauptmann an active duty posting at Döberitz Airfield. He soon was back in uniform, training men. His charisma and leadership ability enabled him to even get along with the Worker´s and Soldier´s Councils (that caused a lot of trouble in other places). But shortly after, Berthold was ordered to close the Airfield and dismiss his men. Berthold worried that the ever rising number of unemployment would drive the men towards the Spartakus and similar movements.

When Munich, capital of Bertholds home region, was taken over by Communists in April 1919 and proclaimed a “soviel republic”, several Freikorps from all over of the country came to free it. For Berthold this was a turning point. He saw a purpose again. He now saw an opportunity to keep fighting for his country. He put out a call for young men to join him and form their own Freikorps. Soon he had gathered around 1,200 men for his “Eiserne Schar Berthold”. He trained the mostly very young farmers boys and in August they answered the call to go to the Baltics to fight the Bolsheviks there.

Berthold and his men travelled to Mitau, Lithuania to join with the Eiserne Division (Iron Division). There, Germans and anti-Bolshevik Russian were fighting the Red Army side by side. But also local troops that wanted complete independence and both Germans and Russians out of their country. It was a brutal fight from all sides. Bertholds right hand was still paralyzed, he was not able to join in the active fighting but he rallied and motivated his men with great success. They came into the suburbs of Riga but then it was over. Pressure from the German government to cease fighting and return home as well as strong resistance made it impossible to keep fighting. The Freikorps did not get any new supplies, be it food or weapons; something that even Bertholds iron will and dedication could not substitute. 

Starving and their numbers greatly decimated Berthold and his group returned to Germany in December 1919. There it was demanded that the Eiserne Schar be disbanded. Bertold did not agree to this, knowing that there was nothing waiting for him or his loyal fighters. They were ordered to report to several different locations, finally ending up in Harburg (near Hamburg), which was governed by Independent Socialists.  During this time a military-backed putsch (“Kapp-Putsch”) to overthrow the Government in Berlin was about to be carried out, with support of Lieutenant-Commander Hermann Erhardt, with a Freikorps of his own. 

Berthold was accused of wanting to come to its support and ordered to give up his weapons. Harburg officals ordered the officers of the Reichswehr stationed in the town to be arrested. Tensions rose and Berthold met with town representatives who promised safe accommodations and later on transportation for his troops. He and his men went to make camp in the local school. Local union trade leaders demanded of the Reichswehr soldiers to subdue Berthold but they were ordered to stay out of it. The trade leaders then called for their workers to take up arms against the Eiserne Schar Berthold. The men in the school readied their weapons, including machine guns, to defend themselves against the advancing lynch mob. A fight broke out (it is unclear who fired the first shot). Bertholds men were outnumbered and being fired at from all sides. Many died inside the school. After a while a cease fire was called. Berthold managed to come to an agreement with the local authorities: His men were to give up their arms and then be allowed to leave the city unharmed. But that deal was broken the second a disarmed Berthold and his men stepped out of the school. Some local sympathizers warned Berthold that he will be attacked and should try to sneak out on his own but he refused to leave his men. That was his doom. The men were attacked from all sides the second they stepped out of the school and soon lost sight of their leader. Shortly after one of the attackers called out tauntingly: “There lies your great leader”. The men of the Eiserne Schar Berthold looked towards a street corner where an unrecognizable body lay in the gutter.

Autopsy results:

The captain's blue tunic was completely torn open. There were severe scratch wounds to the neck. Terrible piston blows had shattered the entire top of his skull. Seven shots in the head, left and right chest shots, all from behind. The spine was completely separated.

Bibliography:

Iron Man – Rudolf Berthold: Germany´s indomitable fighter ace of World War I, Peter Kilduff

Kamerad Berthold, Thor Goote

Rudolf Berthold, Ludwig F. Gengler (this book consists mainly of Bertholds diary)

Die Geächteten, Ernst von Salomon

[koks-kino]

Ads of Weimarer Republik.

Scanned from BDG Adressbuch : Mitgliederverzeichnis des Bundes Deutscher Gebrauchsgraphiker E. V. Berlin 1926/27

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Der Kampf mit dem Drachen der Not [Fighting the Dragon of Poverty / Destitution],” Simplicissimus. Vol. 37, issue 15, July 10, 1932. ---- Die Lanze der Verordnung sticht doch nur den Drachen leider nicht. 

[Unfortunately, the lance of decree just doesn't pierce the dragon.]

A somewhat heroic St. George-ish Franz Von Papen tries to lance the dragon afflicting Germany with poverty, need, economic distress, and destitution, but the lance of ‘government decree’ kills only the victim, not the cause. Of course, one of the odd feelings reading old issues of Simplicissimus is that though we know von Papen as one of the gravediggers of German democracy, he is generally presented in these pages as a totally normal politician dealing with not so normal situation.

[ebert1f]

Reichsbanner Schwarz, Rot, Gold

[hauntedbystorytelling]

Thimig by Fleischmann · 1929

Trude Fleischmann (1895–1990) ~ Helene Thimig in riding outfit, Vienna, 1929. Vintage silver print, sepia-toned, on postcard paper | src Ostlicht view more on wordPress

[josh-lanceero]

more oldmas/fem oc ehehehe (This is George/Agness)

(I was trying to revive some of my 20s oc and end up just redoing everything)

[fernsehn]

The other day I went to the WEIMAR WEIBLICH (WEIMAR FEMALE) exhibition of the Frankfurt Film Museum. Something that made me tear up right at the start of the exhibit was their display of old film-diaries in which people saved their feelings and thoughts about the movies they went to. The exhibit also contextualizes the way in which audiences of the 20s were captivated by the stars on their screens. Some of that finds its way into those diaries. Some is visible in early selfie-automaton-poses in which folks imitated movie stars of that era ... I felt such a deep connection and at the same time confirmation of my own feelings of "being under a spell" of performers and motion pictures. I loved that they started the exhibit with these "feelings" that you could deem über-emotional or whatever but it's ultimately one of the key aspects of the affects cinema has on us. It's erotic. It's intense. It's magical (always the potential of dark magic being used/misused). It's overwhelming. The thought that I share this overwhelm with people who lived 100 years ago was so sweet and previous. And yes, those diaries felt like livejournal-tumblr prototypes.

[bauerntanz]

Streik!

#Streik! Über die Anfänge der Arbeiterbewegung und erste Arbeitskämpfe in #Lingen, (Stadtarchiv-Reihe Archivalie des Monats)

Streik! Lingens Stadtarchivar Dr. Mirko Crabus berichtet auf der Website des Stadtarchivs über die mühsamen Anfänge der Arbeitskämpfe in Lingen: “Im Zuge der Industrialisierung nutzten die Arbeiter zunehmend Streiks als Mittel, ihren Forderungen Nachdruck zu verleihen. Bald entstanden die ersten Gewerkschaften. Bekämpft wurden sie von den Unternehmern, aber auch vom Staat, der immer wieder…

[architekturbanistik]

Haus der Weimarer Republik, Theaterplatz Weimar

Internationaler Wettbewerb 2017

Entwurf: Klaus E. Krauss, Berlin und Rolf Kursawe, HKR+ Architekten, Köln

Städtebau

Der Entwurf orientiert sich am Workshop-Ergebnis von 2015. Ausgehend von der damaligen Variante „Wohnen“ halten wir hofartige Bebauungen östlich des ehemaligen Zeughauses für ein adäquate Antwort auf die vorhandenen Umgebungsstrukturen. Jedoch halten wir es für notwendig, die neuen Baukörper weniger schematisch sondern eher individuell auf die vorhandenen erhaltenen Einzelbauwerke reagieren zu lassen. Wir sehen es als unabdingbar, statt der „aufgelösten“ Struktur des Workshop-Ergebnisses eher die Struktur der Altstadt weiterzubauen und raumbildende Baukörper vorzusehen; nur so lässt sich die hohe Qualität des öffentlichen Raumes in der Altstadt auch an dieser Stelle we

iterführen.

Architektur

Die Öffnung des derzeit bestehenden Eingangs zu einer „arkadenartigen“ Loggia ermöglicht einen spannenden Gegenpart zum Nationaltheater und dem Denkmal von Schiller und Goethe, aber auch einen angemessenen Zugang zum Haus der Weimarer Republik.

Das neu entstehende Foyer verzahnt als lichtdurchfluteter Raum die unterschiedlichen Ebenen von Ausstellungsräumen und Multifunktionsraum mit Garderobe und Nebenräumen; gleichzeitig entsteht ein lebendiger Bereich für alle Besucher.

Die noch vorhandenen Außenmauern des Zeughauses werden bewusst als eigene Zeitschicht erhalten und umrahmen einen „eingestellten“ verglasten Neubau, der so auch alle schwierigen Anschlusspunkte zwischen Alt und Neu konsequent vermeidet.

[subtile-jagden]

Es ist nichts Neues entstanden durch die Novemberrevolution. Wir haben keine Umschichtung erlebt, geschweige denn eine Revolution. Alle die alten Werte sind wieder da, sie sind nie verschwunden, aber jetzt zeigen sie sich ohne die glänzende Bemalung , die ihnen vor dem Krieg die Gültigkeit verlieh. Nur das Heer ist futsch, und das war noch das Beste an der ganzen Vorkriegsepoche. Es ist schon richtig, was die Kommunisten sagen, nämlich, daß dieselbe Bourgeoisie öffentlich herrscht, die bis zum November 1918 unter der Oberfläche herrschte. Aber wir haben keine Revolution gehabt. Also können wir gegen die Revolution nicht angehen. Wenn die Revolution nicht stattgefunden hat, was dann? Dann müssen wir eben die Revolution machen.

Ernst von Salomon about the time after WW1 and the motivation of the Freikorps.

[”Nothing new came out of the November Revolution. We have not experienced a restructuring, let alone a revolution. All the old values are back, they never disappeared, but now they show themselves without the shiny paint that gave them validity before the war. Only the army is gone, and that was still the best thing about the whole pre-war epoch. It is true what the communists say, namely that the same bourgeoisie rules publicly that ruled under the surface until November 1918. But we have not had a revolution. So we cannot oppose the revolution. If the revolution has not taken place, then what? Then we have to make the revolution.”]

[koks-kino]

Ads of Weimarer Republik, part three.

Scanned from BDG Adressbuch.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Among present-day political parties, the Socialists, and notably the German Social Democratic Party, especially in its early years and around the end of the last century, made extensive use of symbols as a means of recruitment and of encouragement to active membership. The Red Flag, the carnation in the buttonhole, and the term ‘‘comrade” are symbols that have played an important part in the history of the Socialist movement. It is true that as time passed the Social Democratic Party, and especially its leaders, became more and more respectable; it grew ashamed of its earlier sentimental explosions, and considered symbolism a game for children; its leaders no longer let themselves go except in the accumulation of evidence and statistics and in economic theory and history and the like. If ever they returned for a moment to their old emotional propaganda, once used with such skill, they made such tame and ineffective use of it that it was robbed of its appeal. 

The new style was in conformity with the new theory: it was believed that the whole mechanism of the world was simply a series of economic operations, and that men were simply the pieces in a game of chess, identical automata, furnished with digestive apparatus and not much else that mattered, and reacting only to economic agents. It was said that everything followed a natural and inevitable course: the whole world was becoming industrialized; overproduction and unemployment, the inevitable consequences of the capitalist chaos, produced a crisis; the “fuel” for the “automata” ran short; the automata “rebelled”; and every four years, when a button was pressed that sent them to the ballot-box, they voted in increasing numbers for the advanced parties. At last the end so patiently awaited, the 51 per cent, of the total vote, would be attained, the era of Socialism would begin, and then the jugglers with statistics, having completed the necessary democratic formalities, would proceed to give the automata a happy existence.

The practical conclusion to be drawn from this theory was : “Discipline! Keep cool! We shall reply to our opponents with our votes, ten days after they have slapped our faces!” This was the classic reply given by the leaders of the German Social Democratic Party in Berlin on July 20, 1932, the fatal day on which that party signed its own death sentence by tamely submitting to von Papen’s bluff. On that day von Papen, Chancellor of a "national Government” about to go to the polls, forcibly removed the Socialist Government of Prussia.

For this ignorance of modem physiological data concerning the science of life and of man, this habit of considering man as an automaton, reacting only to the agency of economic factors, this persistent failure to take account of the realities of human nature and its nervous mechanisms, this stubborn fidelity to manifestly inadequate dogmas, a bitter price has had to be paid. In spite of all the prophecies concerning the securing of the famous 51 per cent, of the votes, prophecies which were not so far from fulfillment, the Socialist parties of the whole world, in spite of the important trump cards in their hands, have suffered defeat after defeat. Their Fascist opponents, the last descendants of capitalism in its death throes, men without human ideals and without any well-defined economic programme, found means of setting the masses in motion and of administering shocks to the great democracies, frequently even wresting power from them.

How has this sort of thing become possible? The reply is plain: the opponents of the democratic governments were not wedded to mistaken dogmas; they had an intuitive comprehension of the true nature of man, and acted upon it in politics. It is true that their political aims are absurd and actually anti-human; but they met with success because the Socialists were incapable of making use of the only weapon that was of any real use at the time, that of propaganda; or, if they made any use of it, did so unwillingly and half-heartedly.”

- Serge Chakotin, The Rape of the Masses: The Psychology of Totalitarian Political Propaganda. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1940. p. 94-96.