The Weimar Republic The Crisis of Classical Modernity

Writing on the Weimar Republic tends to focus either on the crises of its latter years and its takeover by the Nazis, or on the extraordinary cultural and social life of 1920s Berlin. Whilst the nature of Weimar's terminal crisis, of how a remarkably liberal and progressive state could succumb eventually to Fascism, remains one of the central historical questions of our century, there is more to the period than the failures of its beginning - notably the Spartacist revolution of 1918 - and the state's eventual collapse and transformation into the Third Reich.;In this study Detlev Peukert presents a history of Weimar, weaving into his political narrative an examination of social and economic developments as well as the remarkable cultural achievements of the period. He offers an interpretation of the Republic both in relation to the history of 20th-century Germany and as an archetype of the problems of advanced industrial society.