Doom is the word that immediately comes to mind when thinking about the Weimar Republic. Weimar is a candy-coated horror tale: a cradle of modernity that gave birth to fascism and totalitarianism. Weimar signifies an artistically and intellectually vibrant period—defined by the novels of Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse, the expressionist poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, the atonal music of Arnold Schönberg, the design and architectural experimentation of the Bauhaus—a period replete with so much social and cultural experimentation, yet packed with nasty racial and religious tensions, to say nothing
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