This chapter examines the political culture of the fragile Weimar Republic, focusing in particular on its tumultuous beginning and its calamitous end. Rather than narrating a story of unavoidable doom or one that focuses exclusively on Weimar’s cultural achievements, it stresses the complexity and the multifaceted crises that marked this era of German history. This essay considers the particularly German elements of the Weimar period but also the ways in which Germany’s post-First World War experience can be situated within a broader regional context.

The fragmentation of the European art market after the First World War resulted not only from the war itself but also from deliberate legislative choices. Post-1918 legislation was enacted in a climate of emergency, influenced by the imperative to generate fiscal revenue and protect art. Paris’s decline as an art hub was exacerbated by well-meaning but ill-conceived export and tax regulations, hindering its ability to regain pre-war prominence. Fears of economic and political seizure influenced Weimar policymakers, worsening German isolation. In contrast, Britain opted for minimal postwar intervention. These legislative approaches reflected different economic trajectories as much as they did postwar mentalities. The state’s attempt to protect art, extract profit from it, and avoid economic and cultural expropriation was a symptom of postwar nationalisation. It dealt the final blow to an already weakened European auction system.

In this concluding chapter, the authors summarize the findings of the volume’s contributions and further develop the notion of the Weimar analogy as providing central clues about conceptions of modernity in the postwar era. It further emphasizes the multiple ways in which Weimar has been mobilized in different contexts, how it has worked as a cultural symbol, and why it has had such a profound impact on postwar political thinking in the West. The chapter, finally, expands on what we may take away from the studies in this volume for a more general understanding of the role of analogies and historical lessons for political thought.

In this introductory chapter, Lebow and Norman identify the Weimar Republic and its collapse as the paradigmatic historical example shaping political thinking about fragility and robustness in the postwar world. It spells out the volume’s analytical focus on Weimar lessons in comparative perspective and identifies its theoretical starting points in a broader scholarly field concerned with the role of historical analogies in politics.

Breiner emphasizes Weimar’s role as an exemplar in political thought and focuses specifically on the highly influential political scientist Otto Kirchheimer. His chapter highlights how Kirchheimer viewed the Weimar Constitution as a struggle over conflicting and irreconcilable notions of democracy and society and further ties it to his postwar theory of political opposition and its decline. Breiner uses these discussions to highlight how mainstream American political science have misunderstood these ideas and how they relate to core aspects of the Weimar problematique.

Smith’s chapter focuses on the continued influence of the idea of Weimar Berlin in contemporary popular culture. The chapter takes as its starting point recent cultural expressions, such as the television series Babylon Berlin, focusing on previously unexplored aspects of how Weimar is depicted as a modern Babylon. Smith identifies two particularly salient aspects in these depictions: first, that the portrait of right-wing political cultures within Weimar are given more depth and nuance than are afforded center-left and left-wing ones; and, second, how the depiction of sex and violence leads us back to Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz and its apocalyptic vision of Weimar, along with Anglo-American visions of Weimar that have particularly long staying power, in particular Christopher Isherwood’s depiction of 1930s Berlin and its iterations and adaptations on stage and screen. The chapter demonstrates the ways in which Weimar retains its grip on aspects of our contemporary popular culture and how the particular forms these cultural expressions take may tell us about the lessons drawn from Weimar.

Chapter 30 examines Goethe’s relationship with America. The country was for him an imagined space full of possibility, a historical frontier which opened onto modernity. The chapter considers the transatlantic network which, in the post-Napoleonic period, linked Harvard, Göttingen and Weimar, and would prove particularly important for Goethe’s geological studies. It also describes the – at times ambivalent – perspectives on American democracy that reached Goethe from Prince Bernhard, the son of Carl August, during his American travels, before moving to an analysis of American influences on and representations of America in Goethe’s literary work.

Chapter 18 explores Goethe’s influence on the development of the Weimar landscape, from the gardens of his own houses on the River Ilm and the Frauenplan, to the Ilm Park, grounds that belonged to Weimar’s ruler but were also made available for public leisure use. It also charts the reciprocal relationship between Goethe’s landscaping activity and his literary work, from the resonances of his Werther in his first garden on the Ilm, to those later pieces – especially Die Wahlverwandschaften (Elective Affinities) – which build on his own work with and study of gardens.

Chapter 3 explains the development of the court and society of Weimar, from the strategic decisions taken by Anna Amalia during her regency to the influence of her son, Carl August. The chapter considers the different forms of sociability that were cultivated, alongside the roles of particular institutions in the life of Weimar, above all the theatre and the university at nearby Jena. It addresses the paradox of a society that was at once conservative and progressive, a tension which was also reflected in Goethe’s own career in the town.

Chapter 16 examines the drawings that Goethe produced throughout his life and places his work in its art-historical context. Over the course of the eighteenth century, drawing had come to be seen as an essential artistic technique; Goethe received instruction in drawing in his early years, and from that time on, he drew wherever he was. The chapter analyses the evolution of his work and the shifting influences on it: Dutch art played an important early role, and the inspiration that he received in Italy, including from contemporaries based there, was crucial.

Chapter 4 introduces the official duties that Goethe carried out in Weimar, from his membership of the Privy Council, to the various commissions (such as mining) for which he was responsible, to his leadership of the Weimar court theatre. It also explains the significance of civil service for middle-class men in Goethe’s time. Finally, the chapter reflects on the connections between Goethe’s work as a civil servant and his pursuits in the areas of literature and science, emphasising, at the same time, that these connections are often far from straightforward.

Chapter 2 introduces the two places which were the most significant in Goethe’s life: Frankfurt, the city of his birth, and Weimar, the duchy where he lived from the age of twenty-six. The chapter explains the differing political weight of Frankfurt and Weimar – Frankfurt being the nearest that the Holy Roman Empire had to a capital city, Weimar being altogether more provincial, though nonetheless the capital of one of the more important ‘old principalities’. Moreover, it sets the two places in the context of the upheavals of the time, examining, for example, Weimar’s shifting geopolitical allegiances during and after the Napoleonic era.

The complex relationship between Wagner and Liszt has been much caricatured. Liszt is usually perceived as long-suffering, patient, and generous in his support, while Wagner appears self-serving and ruthless. This chapter unravels how their relationship was shaped by contemporary economic, political, and, artistic forces. In doing so, it observes the contrasting ways Liszt and Wagner attempted to reconcile revolutionary republican sympathies with their desire for royal patronage. It examines the advice and practical support Liszt provided Wagner through his position as Kapellmeister at the Weimar Court Theatre, Liszt’s ambitions to position his relationship with Wagner as equivalent to Goethe and Schiller within a new artistic ‘golden age’ in Weimar, and their differing responses to contemporary aesthetic debates. It highlights similarities and differences in their ideas about the future of music, the relationship between music and drama and its implications for musical form, and their compositional approaches.

Populism is unlikely to be effective where the masses are already incorporated into well-established programmatic parties. However, this chapter shows that deep socioeconomic crises can disrupt those political linkages, providing an opening for populism. The sudden rise of Hitler’s Nazi Party in the early 1930s provides the main narrative for this chapter. Long frustrated in both his armed and electoral attempts to gain power, the fallout of the Great Depression in 1929 and Germany’s own banking crisis of 1931 shocked many Germans, especially on the right, out of their existing political affiliations. Hitler, the master demagogue, was ready to take advantage through a sophisticated propaganda machine. In most other cases across interwar Europe, the populist strategy was ineffective. Less severe crises left most the populace embedded in their existing ties to bureaucratic and patronage-based parties.

This chapter takes Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s baptismal certificate as a point of departure for exploring how Johann Sebastian Bach’s personal and professional relationships during the Weimar years can help illuminate his otherwise poorly documented musical interests in March 1714. He and his first wife, Maria Barbara, selected two musicians – Georg Philipp Telemann and Adam Immanuel Weldig – to stand as godfathers to their newborn son. This move signaled friendship and trust in each man’s potential to guide the future of the next generation of Bach family musicians. Telemann, Weldig, and J. S. Bach were all young men at the time of the baptism, enjoying blooming musical careers. Weldig was engaged at the musically adventurous court of Weißenfels, while Telemann, working in Frankfurt am Main, was a highly prized musical guest at the Weimar ducal courts. Bach was actively engaged both with the repertories performed at Weißenfels and the latest Italianate instrumental styles represented by Telemann’s music. Using Bach’s Cantata BWV 54 (Widerstehe doch der Sünde) as a case study, I show how such diversity is reflected in the way Bach’s and Telemann’s compositions are in dialog with contemporary musical language and, at times, with each other.

As is well known, Telemann was godfather to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who eventually succeeded Telemann in his position at Hamburg. Telemann may have been equally significant for Emanuel’s father Johann Sebastian, serving as a professional role model and providing models for composition. In particular, Telemann’s “Eisenach” cantata Jahrgang of 1710–11 could have been a crucial spur toward Bach’s first essays in the new type of church cantata which he began composing at Weimar circa 1714. Telemann’s later nomination as allgemeiner Capellmeister for the Ernestine Saxon duchies formalized his position as the dominant musical figure in the region while Bach was at Weimar. Musical sources as well as stylistic parallels suggest that, during this formative period, Bach composed vocal as well as instrumental works in emulation of examples by Telemann.

Germany’s musical heritage is remarkably rich, but much of German music history is associated with smaller towns rather than Berlin and other large cities. Meiningen and Weimar are but two examples. Meiningen’s Court Orchestra boasts an illustrious history. In 1867, the town hosted the first meeting of the General German Music Society (ADMV or Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein), founded a few years earlier by Franz Liszt and Franz Brendel to promote the cause of “new music.” It was in Meiningen that Hans von Bülow introduced the young Richard Strauss to orchestral conducting. Between 1889 and 1894, and in Weimar, Strauss consolidated his growing reputation as an orchestral leader and a controversial composer of “new music.”Until illness forced him to resign his position, Strauss conducted works by Cherubini, Haydn, Robert Schumann, and Smetana as well as portions of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and his own symphonic poem Don Juan.

For Richard Strauss, the orchestra was his primary medium of expression, and his use of orchestral forces mirrors the growth and expansion of that ensemble in the late nineteenth century. Strauss’s earliest works call for a traditional double-wind orchestra, which reflects the conservative teachings of his father, Franz Strauss, but by the late 1880s, Richard’s tone poems require triple-wind ensembles with more brass, due to the influences of the Wagnerian Alexander Ritter. Strauss’s experiences as a conductor in Meiningen, Weimar, and elsewhere revealed the limitations of undersized orchestras and the growing practice of reinforcing those ensembles with additional instrumentalists for Wagnerian repertoire, especially including Strauss’s own works. Strauss’s revision of Hector Berlioz’s Treatise on Instrumentation (1905) also appears to have inspired a new generation of composers, who quickly adopted the Wagnerian orchestra in the years immediately after the Treatise appeared.