The Weimar Spectacle

Bauhaus Women: Weimar's revolutionary female artists and how the avant-garde Bauhaus School changed their lives forever

“The Bauhaus. That was an idea, more, an ideal. No difference between draftsmen and artists. Everyone together in a new community, we should build the cathedral of the future. I wanted to be a part of it. And something happened that freed us. We did not learn to paint, but learned to see anew, to think anew, and at the same time we learned to know ourselves” - Re Soupault I’ve been meaning to do an episode about the Bauhaus, which is central to the aesthetics of the Weimar Republic and changed modern design and architecture around the world. I was going to focus on the founders and teachers, but I stumbled upon a wonderful book about the extraordinary lives of women who trained at the Bauhaus. I’ve had trouble finding good, readable histories of women in the Weimar Republic, so starting from their perspectives is a great way to begin discussing the school. This episode is about five amazing women whose lives were changed by the Bauhaus: what it brought them, their struggles and achievements at the school, and their lives afterwards.

'The Red Count': Count Harry Kessler, the socialist aristocrat who believed art would save us all

Count Harry Kessler is remembered today less for what he did — though he did quite a lot — than for what he wrote. His diaries, kept over six decades, are among the most extraordinary documents of the twentieth century. They record conversations with everyone from Rodin and Rilke to Einstein, Strauss, Cocteau, Hofmannsthal, and Diaghilev. They also record his impressions of the great turning points of modern history: the First World War, the Weimar Republic, the rise of Nazism.  In this episode, we’re going to trace the arc of Harry Kessler’s life, with special attention to his Weimar years — when he tried, with extraordinary energy, to build cultural bridges across a divided Europe. I’ll take a look at his privileged origins, his aesthetic vision, his wartime disillusionment, and his relentless advocacy for art as a force for peace and meaning.

Today, is Democracy collapsing and Fascism returning, like the end of the Weimar Republic

Okay, full disclosure, I started this podcast not for any deep political reason, but because I was fascinated by the culture of the Weimar Republic, the music, the arts, the architecture, the personalities. I didn’t start it because I thought that the political parallels between then and now were absolutely clear. But, there’s that thing that happens, where something's in your head and you start seeing it everywhere. Well, I feel like every time I read the news, turn on the radio, listen to a podcast, or talk to a friend over drinks, someone is telling me we are living in days exactly like the end of the Weimar Republic.  I’m not sure about that, but I thought it might be worth an episode.

'The Einstein Of Sex': Magnus Hirschfeld, the man who discovered sex

Today I’m interviewing Daniel Brook, the author of a new book on the pioneering sexual rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld, whose Berlin Institute of Sexual Science was a huge attraction in Weimar Berlin and was eventually destroyed by the Nazis, and whose theories are so contemporary they could be taken directly from modern debates about gender, sexuality, race and freedom. Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a Jewish German physician, sexologist and LGBTQ+ advocate, whose German citizenship was later revoked by the Nazi government. Hirschfeld was educated in philosophy, philology and medicine. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee and World League for Sexual Reform. He based his practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg during the Weimar period and carried out "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights". Hirschfeld is regarded as one of the most influential sexologists of the 20th century. He was targeted by early fascists and later the Nazis for being Jewish and gay. He was beaten by völkisch activists in 1920, and in 1933 his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft was looted and had its books burned by Nazis. Hirschfeld was forced into exile in France, where he died in 1935.

Degenerate Art, Hitler's culture war and the greatest modern art show ever

On 30 June 1937, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Propaganda and Enlightenment, authorised the Director of the Reich Chamber for Culture, Adolf Ziegler, to select and confiscate paintings and sculptures from public collections for a major exhibition on 'degenerate art'. Ziegler said “What's been gathered together in [this] exhibition constitutes the portrayal of a true witches' sabbath and the most frivolous spiritual-artistic cultural bolshevism and a portrayal of the triumph of subhumanity, of arrogant Jewish insolence and total spiritual senile dementia.” This was the infamous exhibition entitled "Entartete Kunst," or "Degenerate Art," in Munich. The objective was to ridicule and condemn modern art that did not align with the party's ideology. This episode delves into the history, motivations, and lasting impacts of this notorious exhibition and unravels the complex narrative of how art became a battleground for ideological control.