What role do intellectuals play in a new democracy? Do they have a special obligation to be supportive and not overly critical of their new government?
Weimar intellectuals, particularly those on the left such as Kurt Tucholsky, Carl von Ossietsky, and George Grosz, have been accused of being destructively critical of the new Republic. Walter Laqueur has argued that in crisis periods intellectuals should hold back on their criticisms and support their government particularly if it is fragile. Other scholars argue that free critical speech strengthens rather than weakens democracy.
How can new constitutional equality for women be translated into real equality that affects women’s lives?
Women dominated the Weimar electorate. Out of a total population of 60 million Germans, two million young men between the ages of 18 and 34 had been killed in World War I and another two million had been so severely physically or mentally injured that they could play little role in governance. Although women had not been allowed to participate in any political organizations almost to the end of the pre-World War I period, they grasped the new opportunities that the war and its aftermath brought. In the earliest years of the Weimar Republic women voted in large numbers and supported the pro-Republican parties that had granted them the vote. Yet, in the last years of the Weimar Republic, women deserted the political parties that had supported the Republic, and in the period from 1930 to 1932 they constituted the fastest growing group to support the Nazi Party. How can new female voters be empowered to assert their independence and vote their own interests? How can strongly entrenched, patriarchal traditions, which still influence civil and criminal codes, be modified to conform to the spirit of the new constitution?
What role does self-deception play in the way that many people evaluate their own social and political circumstances?
In 1921 Kurt Tucholsky, a left-wing intellectual, claimed that “Germans had two passions: beer and antisemitism.” He added that “the beer was twenty-eight proof, but the antisemitism was a hundred proof.” Gershom Scholem, a German Jew who immigrated to Palestine in the mid-1920s, declared that his fellow co-religionists were deceiving themselves into believing that they had been truly accepted into German society. He charged that they were blind to the growing antisemitism around them and cited the numerous antisemitic publications that abounded in Germany including the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. The Russian secret police in the pre-World War I era had fabricated this account of a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. Alfred Rosenberg, a refugee from the Baltic part of the Russian Empire who became a Nazi leader, brought it to Germany. How did self-deception affect the ways Jews viewed their situation during the Weimar Years? Why did many Weimar Jews not recognize the danger of their situation?
“Germans had two passions: beer and antisemitism...the beer was twenty-eight proof, but the Antisemitism was a hundred proof.”
ReplyDeleteI feel a bit guilty because I chuckled when I read that quote...slightly off-topic, but maybe it'll help someone out there to remember this really nice quote. Tucholsky was a German-Jewish journalist, and I can't help but feel the use of an analogy based on alcoholic beverages was a subtle stab against the stereotypical German, as well as an effective description of the strong and volatile presence of Antisemitic opinion in the German population.