Weimar Moment

The Weimar Moment’s evocative assault on closure and political reaction, its offering of democracy against the politics of narrow self-interest cloaked in nationalist appeals to Volk and “community”—or, as would be the case in Nazi Germany, “race”—cannot but appeal to us today. This appeal—its historical grounding and content, its complexities and tensions, its variegated expressions across the networks of power and thought—is the essential context of the present volume, whose basic premise is unhappiness with Hegel’s remark that we learn no more from history than we cannot learn from it. The challenge of the papers in this volume is to provide the material to confront the present effectively drawing from what we can and do understand. 

[T]he book, with its treasure trove of footnotes, is a fascinating and informative documentation of a period in European history whose relevance to the present should never have been missed. The editors are to be congratulated for producing this excellent critique., Weimar’s ghostly presence is brought home, in its range and continuing relevance, in this splendid array of carefully crafted and integrated essays. It is a singular addition to the literature.

Leonard V. Kaplan is Mortimer M. Jackson Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Rudy Koshar is the George L. Mosse WARF Professor of History, German & Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.