Weimar Culture

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A seminal work as melodious and haunting as the era it chronicles, now reissued with a new introduction. First published in 1968, "Weimar Culture" is one of the masterworks of Peter Gay's distinguished career. A study of German culture between the two wars, the book brilliantly traces the rise of the artistic, literary, and musical culture that bloomed ever so briefly in the 1920s amid the chaos of Germany's tenuous post-World War I democracy, and crashed violently in the wake of Hitler's rise to power. Despite the ephemeral nature of the Weimar democracy, the influence of its culture was profound and far-reaching, ushering in a modern sensibility in the arts that dominated Western culture for most of the twentieth century. Vivid and eminently readable, "Weimar Culture" is the finest introduction for the casual reader and historian alike. "A virtuoso performance, not the least because it has cap¬tured, with the greatest possible economy, a culture whose origin and essence were closely intertwined with its politics. Although Professor Gay presents his study as an essay, it is more: a brief historical introduction to a seminal epoch, and a work exhibiting such easy mastery of its material, subtlety of exposition and elegance of style that it can only have sprung from a passionate absorption in the subject and an almost sensuous delight in writing about it." —PETER JACOBSOHN, The New Republic "Mr. Gay discusses the accomplishments of the Bauhaus, the Warburg Institute and other centers of discovery, creativity and enlightenment, and the work of many artists, writers, film makers and thinkers. It is an enormously rich, intriguing and exciting essay, and a major contribution to the study not only of the effects of art and society on each other but of responsibilities to each other and how these may be both accepted and acknowledged." —ELIOT FREMONT-SMITH, New York Times "As a historian and judge, Gay is informed not only by the precedents of Western rationality but also by his own sensibility and response to that which was seductive, intoxicating and overwhelming in the poetry, art, architecture, philosophy and history of Weimar." —EDWARD T. GARGAN, The Nation 16 b/w illustrations.