The little town of Weimar was the crucible of German high culture, democracy, and dictatorship.
It was home to Goethe and Schiller, Nietzsche and Liszt. It gave its name to the Weimar Republic, a troubled period of democratic hope and cultural innovation wracked by hyperinflation and political instability. And it was an early stronghold of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.
It’s easy to look back at this period and diagnose how it all went wrong. Surely catastrophe could have been avoided if only a few more people stood up to tyranny? Why did so many sleepwalk into disaster?
Hindsight is always deceptively clear. But life looks very different when you’re living it.
Historian Katja Hoyer tells the story of Weimar — and by extension, Germany’s descent into chaos — through the lives of ordinary people, giving us a vivid sense of what it must have been like, year by year, as they tried to put food on the table, build businesses, and feed their families.
Katja is the author of Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe, Beyond the Wall, and Blood and Iron. She’s a columnist for the Berliner Zeitung, a regular contributor to The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph and UnHerd, and co-host of Reichs & Republics: The German History Podcast.
You can read more about her on her website, listen to Reichs & Republics, and follow her on Substack and X.
We spoke about Weimar as the centre of German culture, how Elizabeth Nietzsche tarnished her brother’s legacy, and how democratic hope turned to Nazi terror.
These are the books we mentioned in the podcast:
We also mentioned:
Our earlier Personal Landscapes conversation about East German
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