Two more questions to consider for the Weimar Republic:
How do governments encourage individuals and groups to compromise their immediate self-interests to the larger interests of society?
During the years of the Weimar Republic, Germany experienced extreme economic inflation and depression. In November 1923 during the time of hyper-inflation, the German mark, which had traded at 4.2 to the American dollar in 1914, was trading at 4.2 trillion marks to the dollar. Individuals saw their life savings and their hopes for a comfortable retirement disappear overnight. In 1932 at the height of the depression 6 million Germans, one-third of the work force, was unemployed. Yet, these problems went unchecked or were at best belatedly dealt with and reached critical proportions because industrialists, labour union leaders, land owners, and members of the middle class were all caught up in their particular short term self-interests. The historian Charles Meyer argues that, had these various interest groups compromised some of their special interests, the leaders of the Republic would have been able to moderate substantially the effects of the inflation and the depression.
How does a democracy transform an anti-democratic teaching corps so that its schools can be schools for democracy?
Teachers in the Weimar Republic undermined ideological and curriculum reform by clinging to anti-democratic ideas and older, more autocratic approaches to education. These teachers were products of a university and college system, which the historian Ferdinand Lilge believed was responsible for the “failure of German learning” and which the historian Max Weinrich called the training grounds for “Hitler’s Professors”. What types of changes could have been made in the universities and colleges and specifically in the training of teachers so that they could have helped students to see the advantages of democracy and work to prevent its destruction?
