Reading Questions: The Weimar Republic Sourcebook
Chapter 13, "Revolution from the Right"
1. Many of these authors single out "parliamentarism" and "parties" as
part of Germany's problem. What do they mean?
2. Some of these authors try to argue that German conservatives (or "the right")
must be revolutionary in their times. Normally these terms are opposites. Why
do they argue that they belong together?
3. How would you describe van den Bruck's conception of a "third empire?"
4. Why does Schmitt want to distinguish so sharply between liberalism and democracy?
Which is the future, and which is the past? What does he seem to mean by democracy,
anyway? What do you make of his specific criticisms of parliamentarism?
5. Niekisch describes Germany as a "proletarian nation." Does this make him a
Marxist?
Why not?
6. Think about the images and the language of the Stahlhelm manifesto. Do you
find echoes of them in any of the other selections?
7. What is Lebensraum? (See the Stahlhelm manifesto.)
8. Bronnen insists that "Nationalism recognized the theater only as a site of
cultic rites…Nothing exceeds the authenticity of the cult" (346). Does this remind
you of anything? What would that other writer have made of Bronnen and the other
authors collected here?
9. What happens to politics once it is based, as Schmitt thinks it must be, on
the friend-enemy distinction? What might be some alternative conceptions of politics?
Why do you think Schmitt insisted on his?
Chapter 17, "Designing the New World: Modern Architecture and the Bauhaus"
1. Taut, Gropius, and others appeal to a sense that the modern world is somehow
fragmented and in need of "unity." How do they reinterpret this old metaphor
and put it to their own purposes? What are the specific fragmentations they
identify? How can those splits be reunified?
2. Some of these authors stress the need for a restoration of the crafts and
the guild model, others an adaptation to industrial society; some even do both.
Can these proposals be reconciled? For Gropius, training in the crafts must
be mandatory at the Bauhaus. Why?
3. The pieces by Taut and Gropius have a visionary element; they project a
vision of the future that suggests religious elements. Can you define this
vision? Is
it still there in the later documents, or has it changed?
4. Mies van der Rohe and others insist that the Bauhaus?s goal must be to create
a unified style that expresses something essential about its age. As opposed
to what? Does this opposition remind you of anything? Does he describe this
style as German in any way?
5. Mies and others in the later selections use terms like "functionality" and
"objectivity." At one point he even states that "our time is not lofty" and
"we will build no cathedrals" (439). What does he mean? Is there a tension
or even
a contradiction with the early pieces by Taut and Gropius?
6. What seems to be at stake in the exchange between Gropius and Schultze-Naumberg?
What is the core of their disagreement?
7. Pay careful attention to the language of Hannes Meyer's "The New World."
Is his vision of modern technology prosaic and functionalist? How would you
characterize
it? Be sure to mark at least a couple of striking passages. Don't forget Meyer
when we read Walter Benjamin's piece on "The Work of Art in the Age of Its
Technical Reproducibility" in a couple of weeks.
8. In the middle of all the heated rhetoric we're reading this week, don't
miss Rudolf Arnheim's refreshing description of his encounter with the Bauhaus
headquarters
in Dessau.
9. Drawing on all these selections, how would you say that the members of the
Bauhaus defined "the modern?"