#weimer republic

[obsidian-sphere]

Girls of Weimar Berlin by Barbara Ulrich, 1927.

[rainydaypaperback]

A MODERN DANCE OF DEATH - by Frans Fiedler- German Weimer Republic

A weird and wonderful album of life's dance with sex, love and death by the eccentric photographer Franz Fiedler (1885-1956). which shows a nude woman with a skeleton in various erotic poses. The preceding text, tells about death who is a fool and her playmate. A wonderful and in every sense of the world unique album, made against the backdrop of unstable Weimar republic, in which hedonism, sex and fear where indeed intimated companions. Fiedler won at the 1911 world exhibition in Turin the first prize and had another exhibition in Prague in 1913. He belonged to the circle of Jaroslav Hašek and Egon Erwin Kisch and in 1916 married Erna Hauswald in Dresden where he occupied astudio at Sedanstraße 7. From 1919, he began to work with a 9×12 folding camera and in 1924 became one of the first professional photographers to use a Leica. After expanding his studio in 1925, he took part in the exhibition "Film und Foto" in Stuttgart. The outstanding publication on the city of Dresden, conceived in the spirit of Die Neue Sachlichkeit, is one of the first illustrated works created according to the new principles of photography. It marks a turning point in his work. Fiedler's studio was destroyed on 13 February 1945. All that was left was a box with photographs for an exhibition which was deposited with his family in Moravia. After 1945 he did not have his own studio and earned a living in the GDR as author of books on photography. Anneliese Kretschmer, Dortmund, is one of his pupils.

[janeander]

ANITA BERBER 1899-1928 DANCER, ACTRESS, WRITER, L'ENFANT TERRIBLE OF THE WEIMER REPUBLIC "Karl Toepfer places Berber in the context of her era's attitude towards nudity, as exemplified by the German "physical culture" movement ("Nacktkultur") that elevated the nude body to a symbol of fitness and beauty. He contrasts this idealism with the alienated style in Berber's work that he sees as an attempt to "aestheticize" her "sickness," while also noting the considerable dance skills she employed. In Droste/Berber's portrayals of addiction, horror, narcissism, ecstasy, and morbidity, Toepfer sees a challenge to modernity's claim to authenticity and even a macabre mysticism. Susan Funkenstein offers a dispassionate examination of the famous portraits of Berber created by Dix and Charlotte Berend-Corinth and the role scandal played in cultivating Berber's persona. She views Berber's notoriety as a performance, and the acceptance of such imagery as part of a cultural shift toward acknowledging women's freedom of movement. From this perspective, Berber's art is seen as a significant forerunner of contemporary performance art." -- http://www.glbtq.com/arts/berber_a.html

[noicon]

Dean Burnett: Time travellers all seem to want to kill Hitler, but this could make things worse.

click to read

[themcginny]

Can't get enough of Metropolis. Makes me think about Weimer art production and society, Societal and class structural changes of the time, the Hebrew concept of the Golem, societal conditioning...So many layers. Great production.

I am kidding myself as I type that I will have the time to write at length on this film.  

[fyeah-history]

1923-issue 50 million mark banknote. Worth approximately US$1 when printed, this sum would have been worth approximately US$12 million, nine years earlier. The note was practically worthless a few weeks later, because of continued inflation