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Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider

3.69 of 5 stars 3.69 · rating details · 212 ratings · 20 reviews

First published in 1968, Weimar Culture is one of the masterworks of Peter Gay's distinguished career. A study of German culture between the two wars, the book brilliantly traces the rise of the artistic, literary, and musical culture that bloomed ever so briefly in the 1920s amid the chaos of Germany's tenuous post-World War I democracy, and crashed violently in the wake...more

Paperback, 240 pages

Published December 17th 2001 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published 1968)

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Dec 23, 2011 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: German Students, German History Teachers, Historians

Recommended to Michael by: Richard Beyler

Shelves: academic-history, literary-studies

While this book is little more than a reflective essay on certain key points its author is interested in, it remains a profoundly interesting and influential text. It also has the advantage of being very accessible and well-written, so can be readily used by non-specialists. It is rather old now, so it certainly doesn't represent the most current
research on its subject, but it remains a point of departure for much recent work as well.

Writing in 1968, Gay was concerned to make his work also a mes...more While this book is little more than a reflective essay on certain key points its author is interested in, it remains a profoundly interesting and influential text. It also has the advantage of being very accessible and well-written, so can be readily used by non-specialists. It is rather old now, so it certainly doesn't represent the most current
research on its subject, but it remains a point of departure for much recent work as well.

Writing in 1968, Gay was concerned to make his work also a message to the current generation, many of whom were inspired by artistic and literary trends with their roots in interwar Germany (Dada, Expressionism, the Bauhaus and Bertolt Brecht, to name just a few). In some ways, Gay's book is a reminder and a warning about what followed, and a consideration of the ways in which these movements failed to prevent the collapse of freedom into a totalitarian horror. At the same time, it is clear that Gay himself is fascinated by the diversity and breadth of Weimar cultural expression, and he is far from unsympathetic to many of the participants, which is part of how his writing draws the reader in.

Gay's thesis for this short work is simple: during the period after the fall of Imperial Germany, people who had always felt themselves to by "outsiders" to the mainstream became the "insiders." This parallels the odd foundation of the Republic at the end of the First World War, in which the military elite suddenly thrust the opposition Social Democrats into the position of having to form a government to surrender to the Allies. It also parallels rather neatly the way that many young people were understanding themselves in 1968, at a time when it seemed that an older generation was on the verge of collapse in the face of youthful enthusiasm and people who happily called themselves "freaks."

In that sense, Gay was wise to make the point that the enthusiasm of the revolution was followed by the Dolchstosslegende, by the sense of betrayal of Germany by the revolutionaries, and by a system in which most of the real power was held by people who nominally or actively opposed the Republic. Similarly, the New Left rapidly found itself alienated from the American mainstream, being accused of having lost the war in Vietnam, and being maced and arrested for trying to make its voice heard by the Democratic Party it thought of as an ally. The message remains just as relevant in the current unstable political situation, although Gay offers little in the way of solutions.(less)

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Jul 30, 2011 Claudia Ciardi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: berlin-culture-and-life

Weimar fu una stagione di grande vitalismo politico e culturale ma anche di tensioni e difficoltà di ordine sociale ed economico che finirono per produrre molte delle fratture esiziali alla sua sopravvivenza.
Questa coraggiosa fabbrica dell’alternativa sociale, nata dal dramma della guerra, ebbe un cammino affatto agevole e fece non poca fatica a sfuggire ai bassi tiri del conservatorismo e ai maneggi di certi professionisti della politica e delle arti, il cui unico obiettivo era servire il propr...more

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Jul 27, 2009 IWB rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-european-history

Gay’s book, "Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider", is a chronological study of the artistic and intellectual life of the Weimar Republic that emphasizes the contributions of Wilhelmian era “outsiders” and their rise to influence as Republican era “insiders.” Drawing his sources from various autobiographies, memoirs, and diaries; numerous written records, letters, and correspondence; and personal interviews and recollections, Gay documents the creative culture that flourished in the Weimar Re...more Gay’s book, "Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider", is a chronological study of the artistic and intellectual life of the Weimar Republic that emphasizes the contributions of Wilhelmian era “outsiders” and their rise to influence as Republican era “insiders.” Drawing his sources from various autobiographies, memoirs, and diaries; numerous written records, letters, and correspondence; and personal interviews and recollections, Gay documents the creative culture that flourished in the Weimar Republic. Gay includes both an annotated bibliography and, even though his focus is on the creative spirit of Weimar culture, an appended synopsis of the history of Weimar politics.

Gay states his thesis to be the following: In the Weimar Republic outsiders became insiders. Now, allow me a bit of pedantry for the moment. His key terms, while not defined precisely, are understood to apply broadly as follows: “Outsider” denotes a kind whose members are typically marginalized due to their perceived identity by the imperial elites (e.g., the Emperor, university professors, artistic directors, and the like). These outsiders can be identified politically, ethnically, and artistically; thus, for example, the democrat, the Jew, and the avant-garde artist are outsiders, respectively. A person, furthermore, is not delimited to just one kind—one might be a Jewish democrat who supports modernist trends in literature and music. The constitutive feature of an outsider thus is a relative identity condition. “Insider” denotes a kind whose members have relatively significant cultural influence due to their respective positions of authority and power—“decision-makers” as Gay calls them; e.g., curators of museums and galleries, directors of orchestras and theatres, chairs of private centers of scholarship. While not explicitly stated, Gay treats the membership between outsiders and insiders in the Weimar Republic as a one-way relationship—outsiders may become insiders but not conversely.

According to Gay, his thesis—that outsiders became insiders-- implies the claim that these outsiders had already been active in the late Empire. As Gay sees it, this claim is a necessary condition for the plausibility of his thesis statement. Gay’s thesis, then, is really the following conditional statement:
(T) If in the Weimar Republic outsiders became insiders, then these outsiders had already been active in the late Empire.

Gay argues for this claim throughout the book. Chapter one, however, is particularly devoted to establishing the consequent. In this chapter, Gay provides compelling evidence that not only were outsiders present in imperial Germany but also the corollary claim that their political and artistic sentiments made the ruling classes sick. For instance, German artists had moved from impressionism to expressionism well before the foundation of the Republic—Kadinsky wrote Uber das Geistige in der Kunst in 1910—as had German composers from the brooding romanticism of Brahms and Bruch to varying degrees of atonalism and serialism—Schoenberg completed the twelve-tone system in 1912. In 1908 the Emperor dismissed Hugo von Tschudi, the director of the National Gallery in Berlin, for having subversive modernist tastes; similarly, Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, while musically still in the style of late romanticism, portrays the Baron as a dumb ox, which prompted the Empress to prevent its opening in Berlin.

The subsequent chapters follow a similar argumentative format. Each chapter consists of a simple enumeration of evidence for the thesis. With each chapter focusing on a different aspect of Weimar culture, the result is a sweeping account of the rise of outsiders whose influence as insiders is virtually undeniable. For instance, in a number of chapters Gay discusses Walter Gropius and the significance of the Bauhaus. Chapter three sketches the innovations and influence of poets and novelists, such as Stefan George, Rainer Rilke, and Thomas Mann. Gay adeptly reveals the importance of cinema and its relation to artists; hence, Gay reveals the impact that the 1920 film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and the three expressionist painters—Warm, Rohrig, and Reimann-- who designed the sets, had in the Republic and particularly in Berlin. In chapter six, Gay demonstrates the flourishing of modernist composers, such as Alban Berg and Paul Hindemith, and those conductors with whom they collaborated, such as Erich Kleiber and Wilhelm Furtwanger, who could finally raise their batons in full musical license. While not pretending to give a rigorous analysis of theoretical developments in philosophy, literary criticism, and history, Gay does discuss the cultural and political impact that arose from Ernst Cassier’s interpretations of Kant, Martin Heidegger’s magnum opus of ontology, Sein und Zeit, and Leopold von Ranke’s ideological historiography.

Gay succeeds in giving a cogent argument for his thesis—it is, indeed, the case that in the Weimar Republic outsiders rose to an unprecedented level of prominence within the Weimar Republic. This success, nevertheless, has some difficulties. Gay’s project is opaque at times, for a number of reasons. First, Gay frequently inserts rhetorical flourishes that, instead of motivating the argument for his thesis, merely serve to misdirect the reader’s focus. For instance, it is one thing to demonstrate the developed, modernist creative culture of Weimar, quite another thing to merely assert that “ the Weimar Republic was a breathless era of cultural flowering that drew the world’s attention….” Phrases likes this occur throughout the text and leave one with the impression that perhaps Gay is tacitly arguing for something more; namely, that Weimar culture is unique in the history of the twentieth century. Suppose Gay intends this. Such an argument seems prima facie false. The Weimar Republic certainly can boast a significant number of impressive individuals, such as Gropius, Schoenberg, and Heidegger, as well as influential movements, such as logical positivism, serialism, and expressionism. But having a number of influential persons and movements seems to be a general feature of a number of European states at this time, such as France, where there were a number of important composers, philosophers, and writers; and Russia, which also had a number of important writers and an extraordinary group of modernist composers that included Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Mosolov, and Shostakovich.

Another difficulty with Gay’s project is that his thesis argument is not the most interesting aspect of the book. Far more interesting are Gay’s chapter-by-chapter psychoanalytic speculations about the cultural mindset and spirit of the Republic itself. This is most palpable in specific discussions. For example, Gay attempts to explain why various intellectuals engaged in ‘revivalism’ in which scholarly research erupted in Holderlien and Kleist studies. Gay refers to this need for revivalism as a German “hunger for wholeness.” Or when, for instance, Gay attempts to psychoanalyze why the ‘community of reason’- –the various intellectual institutions—were often divided amongst themselves, yet united in the pursuit of modernism. Lastly, Gay gives a psychoanalytic explanation for the German artists, philosophers, and psychologists’ love affair with poetry during the Weimar period. While Gay’s psychoanalytic musings are more interesting than the historical thesis, they are hardly as demonstrative. For this reason, Gay’s book lacks rigor and often results in shallow explanations and claims. For instance, without any citations, Gay makes the following claim:
"What Gropius taught, and what most Germans did not want to learn, was the lesson of Bacon, Descartes, and the Enlightenment: that one must confront the world and dominate it, that the cures for the ills of modernity is more, and the right kind of modernity."

Anyone who has seriously studied the philosophies of Bacon, Descartes, and the Enlightenment, recognizes this, at best, to be sophomoric, if not simply false. In Gay’s defense, however, he never claims that his book is a rigorous, exhaustive account. Had it been as such, much of the charm that this book possesses would be lost. In short, though, Gay makes a convincing case for his historical thesis, but his account is often confused by irrelevant rhetoric about the greatness of the culture of the Weimar Republic, and by speculative psychoanalytic explanations.
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Dec 28, 2012 Liam rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Just as the Weimar style was older than the Weimar Republic, so was it larger than Germany." (6)

"Yet if Weimar needed anything, it need rational politics. With the advent of the Republic, the possibility of political action, like the need for it, increased, suddenly and spectacularly. But the possibility was not realized, the need not fulfilled. Not all the trouble lay with the unpolitical; many who had been unpolitical adopted politics of a kind that makes one long for a little apathy." (74)

"B...more

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Sep 25, 2012 Barnaby Thieme rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: art, germany, history

Peter Gay delivers a whirlwind tour of the social and cultural realities of Weimar Germany in this extraordinary little book. What an astonishing time, when the country was electrified and torn every which way by incredible forces driving the country both forward and back. In the words of Visouct d'Abernon, quoted in this book, it was "as if all the eminent artistic forces were shining forth once more, importing to the last festive symposium of the minds a many-hued brilliance before the night o...more

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Jun 17, 2009 Mardel Fehrenbach rated it 4 of 5 stars

My copy of Peter Gay's Weimar Culture was given to me by my father when I was in high school. I read it at the time, but it was perhaps a little more scholarly and dense than what I was looking for at that time. I read it again in college and then I appreciated the fact that it although it is quite scholarly there are times in the book when it is quite imaginative and gripping, unlike many historical tracts I had to read for coursework. I read it again this time after encountering a quote from M...more

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Jul 23, 2011 Geoffrey Rose rated it 3 of 5 stars

Peter Gay's classic - if brief - account of Weimar culture is fun and relevant if devoid of much seriousness in terms of politics, society, and economy. That said, it's still a good place to start for anyone interested in Germany in the Weimar years. Recommended with the above caveats.

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Nov 22, 2012 Prooost Davis rated it 5 of 5 stars

This fine, though very short, description of cultural and political currents in Germany between the end of WWI and the beginning of Nazi rule is a guide to what was right, as well as what went wrong, during the Weimar Republic.

Peter Gay's analysis is readable, compelling, and nourishment for the intellect.

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Apr 05, 2009 Dfordoom rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Disappointing compared to other books of his that I've read. Hsi psycho-analytical approach to history is interesting, but he's much too obsessed with the Nazis. I wanted to read about Weimar Germany, not the Nazis.

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Aug 20, 2012 Moira Downey rated it 3 of 5 stars

An interesting, if rather more academic than I was expecting (a good deal of untranslated German that my single collegiate semester of the language was unable to make fully comprehensible), look at the various major hallmarks of Weimar culture, particularly in relation to and contrast with the strains of reaction that would come to characterize Nazi Germany.

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Jul 31, 2012 teresa is currently reading it

I am a little obsessed with German Expressionist art.

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May 20, 2008 Kenneth E. Harrison, Jr. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

Peter Gay's invaluable overview of the brief life of the Weimar Republic reads at times like a wild annotated bibliography: Gay's scholarship is impressive and inspiring. There are a few instances where his objectivity takes flight (for example, his sudden vitriolic dismissal of Fritz Lang), but on the whole his critical treatments remain tempered and insightful. Also includes a political history and timeline of Weimar and a wonderfully exhausting bibliography.

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Aug 22, 2008 Wendy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: history buffs.

A great book on Weimar culture. Most books I've read on this tumultuous time period have been dry as dust. Gay's writing gives the period the color that you need to get a feel for Weimar culture.

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Mar 26, 2007 Jeffrey Greggs rated it 3 of 5 stars

Excellent "essay" that shows how political trends in interwar Germany led to the ascension of Nazism, while, intellectually, the era was almost Periclean.

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May 09, 2009 Levi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Perfect little book covering the most important aspects of this period with insight and stylish brevity.

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Oct 23, 2008 Judith is currently reading it

Progressive thought eclipsed by the Extreme Right. Will update when I finish.

Not for fiction lovers.

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Jul 25, 2011 Annamarie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Would never recommend this book to anyone. I love German history but this was not great.

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Jan 28, 2012 Benjamin added it

a sudden intrest in heritage, I must be getting old

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Dec 14, 2010 Andrew Klein rated it 5 of 5 stars

whoa. heady stuff.

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Jun 17, 2013 Michael Williams rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: german-orals

Jun 16, 2013 Erosennin added it

Shelves: non-fiction

Jun 13, 2013 Amy marked it as to-read

Jun 13, 2013 Mike Sanders rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-owned

Jun 12, 2013 Gary Cannon marked it as to-read

Shelves: history

Jun 09, 2013 Daniel marked it as to-read

Jun 09, 2013 Patrick marked it as to-read

Jun 06, 2013 Ella Tetrault marked it as to-read

Jun 02, 2013 Devon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-own

May 29, 2013 Kris marked it as to-read

Shelves: european-history, recommendations

May 28, 2013 William Gortowski marked it as to-read

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