Weimar: Intoxication and Calamity

Professor Harald Jähner, a German cultural historian, became well known in the English-speaking world as the author of a best-seller about post-war Germany, Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955 (2021). Now he has published another remarkable book, Höhenrausch. This book, so far available only in German, deals with the hedonistic, turbulent years of the Weimar Republic. Given the success of his first book, I expect it to be published before long in English.

The history of the short-lived Weimar Republic (1918 to 1933), Jähner justifiably complains, is always described from the hindsight standpoint of the Nazi takeover, as if that outcome had been inevitable. In this book, through quotes from diarists, letter-writers, film-makers, journalists, song-writers, cabaret performers and novelists, the facts and feelings are retold as they appeared to observers at the time. The name Hitler thus appears in a substantial context for the first time only after 74…