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PEOPLE & ARTS Wednesday 10 april 2019
New exhibit reconsiders the Weimar Republic, 100 years later

By FRANK JORDANS aret halls and back alleys at a time when Berlin was
Associated Press of interwar Berlin, the Wei- too rowdy for reasoned de-
BERLIN (AP) — A divided mar exhibition hints at dark bate — also provided the
nation grappling with ris- times to come. There are foundations for the coun-
ing inequality, new mass the military firearms finding try's successful post-World
media and the growth of their way onto the streets War II constitution.
populist politics. and fueling political strife If the Weimar period of-
Sounds familiar? that would results in hun- fers any lesson for the
Germany's first democ- dreds of political assassi- present, it's that democ-
racy, the Weimar Repub- nations. There are also the racy shouldn't be taken
lic of 1919-1933, has long photographs of desperate for granted, said Raphael
been regarded as a lesson men and women walking Gross, the director of the
in political failure. Lately, it the streets with sandwich German Historical Mu-
has also been held up as boards looking for work at seum. And while democ-
a cautionary tale for the a time when hyperinflation racy means majority rule,
present. was rampant, food prices a willingness to seek com-
It emerged from the ruins of were skyrocketing and In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, a historic poster is dis- promise is essential for it to
played at the exhibition 'Weimar: The Essence And Value Of De-
World War I, as a defeated hunger was stalking mid- mocracy' at the German Historical Museum in Berlin, Germany. truly serve all and avoid
nation tried to reinvent itself dle-class families. Associated Press sliding into a popular dic-
in the midst of economic But unlike many historical tatorship, he said. "Part of
and social turmoil. It ended exhibitions in Germany, this show's curator. Universal run were all achievements democracy is being aware
with Adolf Hitler's Nazi party one doesn't dwell on the suffrage, the principle of the Weimar Republic can that however much one is
seizing power, persecuting Nazis. gender equality, the estab- lay claim to, she said. convinced of one's own
minorities and leading Ger- "We didn't just want to lishment of works councils The 1919 Weimar constitu- position, nobody can be as
many into another calami- view Weimar from its end- that gave employees a say tion — devised in the epon- confident of the truth as if
tous war. ing," said Simone Erpel, the in how their companies are ymous central German city they were God," he said.q
A new exhibition in Berlin,
100 hundred years later, is
questioning the perception
that the era's political and
economic disaster was in-
evitable and stressing the
lasting impact of the Wei-
mar Republic.
Among the 250 items on
display at the German His-
torical Museum in Berlin are
campaign posters high-
lighting the political de-
bates of the era, from the
fight for secular education
to a debate over the ex-
propriation of Germany's
aristocracy.
A startlingly modern kitch-
en reflects the efforts that
the era's designers made to
accommodate the needs
of working women and
the worldwide influence of
artistic and architectural
trends like the Bauhaus
movement .
Radio recordings by promi-
nent figures, including the
physicist Albert Einstein, re-
veal the buzz surrounding
this new medium and the
way it sped up the news
cycle — for better and for
worse.
Advertisements for fam-
ily planning ("Do not go
blindly into marriage!") and
clips from 1920s films about
gay and lesbian love affairs
reflect the new-found con-
fidence of a generation
willing to challenge sexual
norms.
Like "Babylon Berlin," a
crime series set in the cab-