Notes and Images, Deluge 12-14.

• Chp 13: Cinema: Blue Angel. narcissictic self-indulgence. Public nudity, FKK [284-6]; sunbathing; workout.
• Chp 14: Election posters: the middle; the failure of the centrist parties. Perception of social democrats But note their propaganda.
• Zille: Berliners on the go; schoolboy; at the beach; beach2; in the "hinterhof"; checking to see the report on his latest robbery;
• And with the beginning of the Great Depression: Foreign Credits. Trade statistics...Employment / unemployment statistics

Note esp. the role of patronage and the arts: who is supporting art in all its forms? Proletartians? Middle Class? Wealthy playboys? And where is the money coming from? bear in mind too that tho some German intellectuals succeed dramatically in exile [Gropius, Schönberg, Mies, Schumpeter, Habeler], that was not true of all [Weimar on the Pacific, literary figures like Thomas Mann, a Stefan Georg, Walter Banjamin, esp suffered, tho composers and film-makers did well]

Consider the forces at work here:

Provocation / endemic violence in the urban setting --roots in WW1, trench warfare, civil war, street fighting,

1. Outrage and reaction --based on... People cared enough to fight about ...well, there were a lot of things to fight abou. Politics, music, theater, architecture, etc.
2. Suggests: Public toleration of significant departure from cultural norms:
   1. conscious program of official toleration of broad civic rights; but unofficial intolerance of leftist.
   2. public financial support for a wide variety of cultural events
   3. lack of central control, and
3. Financial support/wealth... yes, but based on massive borrowing primarily from American banks.
4. Leads to: creative innovation nacissism/self-indulgence or nihilism?

Does a high level of creativity require and a high level of anger at the status quo, the ancien regime? But what about the role of the "middle" in the process?