Literature in the Weimar Republic: 3D Gallery

Weimar Republic Literature

Weimar literature refers to the literary and cultural movement that emerged in Germany in the early 19th century.
The movement was strongly oriented towards the classics and was represented and shaped by Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Wieland.
The Weimar Republic was also a heyday of German literature, with outstanding achievements made in all literary fields around 1930.

Thomas Mann

Paul Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate.
His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual.
His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used modernized versions of German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer.

Buddenbrooks

Buddenbrooks is a 1901 novel by Thomas Mann, chronicling the decline of a wealthy north German merchant family over the course of four generations.
It was Mann's first novel and became a major literary success. The work led to a Nobel Prize in Literature for Mann in 1929; although the Nobel award generally recognises an author's body of work.

Erich Maria Remarque

Erich Maria Remarque born Erich Paul Remark was a German-born novelist.
His landmark novel "All Quiet on the Western Front," based on his experience in the Imperial German Army during World War I, was an international bestseller which created a new literary genre of veterans writing about conflict.
Remarque's anti-war themes led to his condemnation by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as "unpatriotic". He was able to use his literary success and fame to relocate to Switzerland as a refugee, and to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen.

All Quiet on the Western Front

All Quiet on the Western Front or, Im Westen nichts Neues, is a semi-autobiographical novel by Erich Maria Remarque
The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental trauma during the war as well as the detachment from civilian life felt by many upon returning home from the war. It is billed by some as "the greatest war novel of all time".

Bertolt Brecht

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet.
He had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler.

Threepenny Novel

Threepenny Novel is a 1934 German novel by the dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht, first published in Amsterdam by Allert de Lange in 1934.
It is similar in structure to his more famous The Threepenny Opera and features several of the same characters
With a general anti-capitalist focus and a didactic technique that is often associated with the dramatist. It is a novel that has been the focus of much critical attention.

Stories of Mr. Keuner

Bertolt Brecht's Stories of Mr. Keuner is a collection of fables, aphorisms, and comments on politics, everyday life, and exile. From 1930 til his death in 1956, Brecht penned these ironic portraits of his times as he was "changing countries more often than shoes."

Disorder and Early Sorrow

Disorder and Early Sorrow is a 1925 novella written by Thomas Mann. It follows the fortunes of the Cornelius family through the perspective of Abel Cornelius, a 47-year-old history professor at the local university, whose status in society was once highly respected but has diminished markedly.

The Cornelius family is, in part, a reflection of Mann's own family. The novella explores the psychological and social impact of the Weimar hyperinflation. It first appeared in 1925 in a Festschrift celebrating Mann's 50th birthday in the publication Neue Rundschau.

Modernism

Amid the political and economic turmoil of the early 1920s, Germany’s cultural and intellectual life was flowering. The so-called Weimar Renaissance brought the fulfilment of the Modernist revolution, which in the late 19th century had begun to transform the European aesthetic sensibility.

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Literature in the Weimar Republic