1924-1929 social & cultural Flashcards
What was the percentage of women in the workforce by 1925?
36%
How many female teachers and doctors were there by 1933?
100 000 female teachers
3000 doctors
Why did young people join gangs?
- to find comradeship, support, sense of adventure
- unemployment was rising
What are some examples of the cliques in Hamburg? Where did they meet?
- Farmers Fear
- Red Apaches
- Death Defiers
- Eagles claw
- Taverns because of alcohol
what is the % of unemployment between 1925 -26 and the age group? Why is that?
- 17% between 1925 and 1926
- age group 14-21
- Because of baby boom between 1900 and 1910
What was the old Civil Code of 1896?
Men had rights to decide on all matters within a marriage, even if a woman took paid employment
How involved were women in politics in the 1920s?
- No female representatives in Reichstrat
- No female cabinet members
- No female leader of a political party
- Only KPD made gender equality a key element
What rights did women receive from the Weimar Constitution?
- Voting rights
- Access to education
- Equal oppurtunities in civil service appointments
- Right to equal pay
What change in gender balance was there after the war?
- Over 2 million germans killed during war so there were fewer opportunities for young women to follow path of marriage and children
What was the most popular womans group 1920s?
- League of German Women (BDF)
- 900 000 members in 1920s
- Traditional family values and responsibilities
what types of young people turned to crime and what did they do?
- Working class families
- Didnt attend highly selected gymnasium schools
- Meant to leave school at 14 to start apprenticeship; instead youth unemployment increased
Why can it be argued women didnt receive equality?
- Many forced to give up employment when married
- Paid less compared to men
- Women continuing to do paid work seen as “double earners”
- ## Blamed for male unemployment
What became widely available for women?
- birth control
What rates increased? What does it show?
- Divorce rates
- that women had more freedom rather than being stuck in marriages
By 1930, how many estimated abortions were there in a year?
1 million
How many deaths were there from abortion by 1930 and why?
- Criminal offence
- Performed by unqualified people
- 10-12 000 deaths
What problems were there im the education system before Weimar government?
- Divided along religious lines
- Divided along class lines
- Reformers didnt succeed in removing influence of church from school
- Protestant and catholic churches had powerful influence over religious education
How did the Weimar Republic solve the education problems 1920s?
- Wanted schools to be more standardised
- Introduced elementary schools for all children attending for first 4 years
- Whoever passed entrance exam would go to gymnasium
- aimed for non sectarian education + free to all pupils
What social welfare reforms by the Weimar government were successes?
- Focuses on lower classes
- Support for war veterans, widows, orphans - shows wide variety of people looked after
What social welfare reforms by the Weimar government were weaknesses?
- Expensive - in 1926 800,000 disabled war veterans were bring supported
- 360,000 war widows, over 900,000 orphans
- Taxes increased
- Delays in paying benefits
- People in need of support felt humiliated
- Means tests to see if people qualify
How did the Weimar constitution help to develop culture?
- Democracy = more liberal atmosphere
- Germans could express opinions freely
- German artists exposed to modernist movements in France, Italy, America
What school did Walter Gropius found?
- Bauhaus
- Collaborated in building of future and different forms of arts
- Architecture, furniture design, painting, photography, etc
What did Bertout Brecht and Kurt Weill create?
- ThreePenny opera - play with music
- Macheath - satire of capitalist society
How was the ThreePenny opera received by people?
- Called ‘noxious cesspool’
- Scandalised many critics
What did Otto Dix think about Weimar culture? How did he express this?
- Haunted by experienced as a machine gunner in ww1
- Created ghoulish depictions of Berlin
- Saw bleaker side of Weimar
What was a famous piece by Otto Dix?
- Metropolis
- Of a jazz club with ‘New women’
- In side panels - Wounded veteran stands by and a companion is dead on the pavement
- Other panel: Scantily clad females and insensible to the suffering around them
How did films criticise German Society?
- Robert Weine’s ‘Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligan’
- Fears about sexual violence with gothic saga
- Hypnotist who manipulates patient to commit murder
- Metropolis - Dystopian vision of future - city segregated by healthy industrialists and army of drones in underground factories
Who did Grosz and Dix criticise?
Bourgeois society - involved government and nationalists
Why could cultural experimentation be seen as a bad thing for Weimar Germany?
Jazz seen as cultural decay, decadence
Increased criticism for Weimar from the left and right
What media began to replace theatre?
Movies, films, cinema
Who was George Grosz?
- Conscripted to fight WW1
- Never supported war effort
- Referred to war as “horror, “mutilation”
- Hated strong nationalism
- Joined Spartacus league
-Critiqued Ebert
-Visited soviet union - turned to socialism - Created art in act of protest against post- war germany
