Oskar von Miller and the Art of the Electrical Exhibition: Staging Modernity in Weimar Germany

Within the larger framework of understanding how modernity wasframed within and through the domestic sphere, this articleconsiders the efforts of Bavarian electrical engineer Oskarvon Miller to electrify and modernize Germany against the backdropof Weimar reform movements. Unlike modernist reformers associatedwith such projects as the Bauhaus or the Werkbund, Miller wasa practical systems-builder who sought to encourage consumptionwithin traditional frameworks of home and Heimat. For Miller,exhibiting the benefits of technology was a key element in securingits success, and his reliance on consumers rested on a corporatistideal that would create a new kind of community centred on technology.Whereas in the Imperial era Miller focused on Handwerker andsmall machines as the guarantors of both progress and socialstability, in the Weimar era he turned to housewives and housework.Through his involvement in electrification schemes as well asin his work in founding the Deutsches Museum, one of the firstmuseums of science and technology in Europe, Miller createda powerful narrative of technological progress that was bothtraditional and modern.     

Mass Politics and the Techniques of Leadership: The Promise and Perils of Propaganda in Weimar Germany

This paper traces the development of ideas about ‘professional’and ‘scientific’ publicity during the Weimar era,and their gradual absorption by mainstream politicians and officialsfrom the late 1920s onwards. The unprecedented wartime effortsto influence domestic morale and the scandalous revelationsof misinformation afterwards greatly increased popular awarenessof the ability of élites to manipulate public opinion,and generated intense interest in the problems of communicatingwith mass publics. Nowhere was this fascination greater thanin Germany, where many attributed their defeat primarily tosuperior enemy propaganda. The result was a wide-ranging postwardiscourse about the power of this modern ‘weapon’and its unavoidability as a part of modern political and commerciallife. Far from learning the so-called ‘lessons of thewar’, government self-representation efforts were steadilycriticized by journalists and advertisers as both quantitativelyand qualitatively inadequate. Whereas most republicans regarded‘propaganda’ as mendacious and unstatesmanlike,many of the radical parties’ publicity efforts clearlyreflected the basic tenets of the concurrent propaganda discourse,in particular the emphasis on emotional appeal and ritualisticsymbols. During the crisis of the early 1930s, amidst the visiblesuccess of the Nazis’ advertising-inspired campaigning,the spread of this discourse across the political spectrum helpedto hollow out democratic conceptualizations of leadership andpublic opinion from the very centre of Weimar political life.     

试析魏玛德国劳资关系的演变——以8小时工作制的兴衰为中心

在魏玛德国,劳资关系经历了从合作走向对立的演变历程。8小时工作制的兴衰正是这一演变历史的真实反映。魏玛初期,在革命压力与迅速复员的要求下,8小时工作制首次在德国确立,劳资关系趋于平衡。然而在1923年国家危机中,8小时工作制成为劳资之间的交锋对象,劳动时间紧急令打破了劳资关系的微妙平衡,国家强制调解机制的出现宣告劳资自由谈判历史的终结。此后,8小时工作制名存实亡,劳资关系日趋紧张,并最终在经济大萧条中迎来纳粹独裁。导致这种演变的主要因素是资本主义社会的经济特征、政治与经济形势的演变以及劳资双方对合作的认识局限。     

Nationalism, racism and propaganda in early Weimar Germany: contradictions in the campaign against the "black horror on the Rhine"

During the early 1920s, an average of 25,000 colonial soldiers from North Africa, Senegal and Madagascar formed part of the French army of occupation in the Rhineland. The campaign against these troops, which used the racist epithet ‘black horror on the Rhine’ (schwarze Schmach am Rhein), was one of the most important propaganda efforts of the Weimar period. In black horror propaganda, images of alleged sexual violence against Rhenish women and children by African French soldiers served as metaphors for Germany’s ‘victimization’ through the Versailles Treaty. Because the campaign initially gained broad popular and official support, historians have tended to consider the black horror a successful nationalist movement bridging political divides and strengthening the German nation state. In contrast, this essay points to some of the contradictions within the campaign, which often crystallized around conflicts over the nature of effective propaganda. Extreme racist claims about the Rhineland’s alleged ‘mulattoization’ (Mulattisierung) increasingly alienated Rhinelanders and threatened to exacerbate traditional tensions between the predominantly Catholic Rhineland and the central state at a time when Germany’s western borders seemed rather precarious in the light of recent territorial losses and separatist agitation. There was a growing concern that radical strands within the black horror movement were detrimental to the cohesion of the German nation state and to Germany’s positive image abroad, and this was a major reason behind the campaign’s decline after 1921/22. The conflicts within the campaign also point to some hitherto neglected affinities between the black horror and subsequent Nazi propaganda.