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The Weimar Republic

The Crisis of Classical Modernity

Detlev J. K. Peukert

Hill and Wang

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ISBN10: 0809015560
ISBN13: 9780809015566

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360 Pages

$20.00

CA$26.99

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Detlev J. K. Peukert traces the rich and complex history of the Weimar Republic from the Spartacist Revolt to the state's eventual collapse and transformation into the Third Reich. Interweaving political narrative with an examination of Weimar's socioeconomic developments and remarkable cultural achievements, Peukert relates modernist culture to the failure of democracy, places Weimar in the history of twentieth-century Europe, and shows it as an archetype of the ambivalences and pathologies of advanced industrial society.

Reviews

Praise for The Weimar Republic

"Taking the reaction to modernity as his central theme, Detlev Peukert has written a book on Weimar so densely packed with insights as to feel almost monumental in scope. Written with formidable Teutonic density and weight, it is a study of trends, not people and events. Specialists will find it a richly rewarding tour d'horizon . . . Peukert has not only an encyclopedic knowledge of the period, but a mind bristling with fresh and unexpected observations."—Ron Chernow, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"The late Detlev Peukert was one of the most innovative historians of twentieth-century Germany. I know of no other single work that so concisely presents the Weimar Republic in all its jagged openhandedness and contradictory aspirations."—Charles S. Maier, Harvard University

"A most informative and provocative study, The Weimar Republic is simultaneously a much needed English overview of this pivotal period of German history, an introduction to the most exciting new historical work on it, and an original challenge to traditional interpretations."—Mary Nolan, New York University

"This rich, imaginative, and challenging account of the Weimar Republic reminds us if how much German history will miss Detlev Peukert's analytic skills and intellectual energy. The Weimar Republic places the crisis of German democracy in the context of a larger European crisis and thus forces us to rethink the historical meaning of the republic's failure."—James J. Sheehan, Stanford University

"Born out of national defeat in 1918, the Weimar Republic launched Germany on an experiment in modernity under the least propitious circumstances. In an outstanding scholarly study that is likely to spark controversy, late German historian Peukert claims that the distinctive national characteristics of German history and of Weimar do not all point in a direct line to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Weimar's fragile attempt at democracy, he contends, was destroyed by a steady retreat from political compromise and by a continuous shrinking of the material and economic base, which prevented the liberal government, with its welfare structure, from gaining real legitimacy in the eyes of the German people. Interpreting Weimar as a brief, headlong tour of the fateful choices made possible by the modern world, this rigorous history explores the paradox of a society that spawned avant-garde cultural breakthroughs amid bleak poverty and political breakdown."—Publishers Weekly

"This relatively brief history appeared first in German in 1987, three years before the author's death. Now in a sound English translation, it offers a wide-ranging social, political, and economic analysis. While not arguing that the Weimar experiment in democracy was doomed to fail, Peukert clearly suggests that a general 'crisis of modernity' rendered a happy outcome most unlikely. Especially good at describing the era's economic problems and class struggles, he fails to do full justice to such social themes as gender and age conflict, which he introduces only to pass over too quickly . . . Well-crafted, sober, and succinct, and well-suited to its intended audience of undergraduate readers and the informed general public."—Library Journal

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BOOK EXCERPTS

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The Weimar Republic

I. INTRODUCTION




An age is always a farrago of different ages. Whole parts of it are unleavened and undercooked; it contains the husks of old forces, and the seeds of new ones.
Alfred...

About the author

Detlev J. K. Peukert

Detlev J. K. Peukert is the author of Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life, a highly accaimed study of daily life in the Third Reich. Former professor of modern history at the University of Essen and director of the Research Institute for the History of the Nazi Period, he died in 1990 at the age of thirty-nine.