Weimar Society and Change

The Golden Years, on the ground

In 1925 the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to a glass and concrete building at Dessau that looked like nothing built before it. In 1927 Fritz Lang released Metropolis, the most expensive film yet made in Europe, and the Reichstag passed a law insuring seventeen million workers against unemployment. In 1928 the Threepenny Opera opened in Berlin and ran for a year. In the same years 11.5 million women were in paid work, women sat in the Reichstag, and a young woman in Berlin could cut her hair short, smoke in public, earn her own money and dance until morning. Her grandmother in Bavaria thought the country had gone mad, and so did a great many voters. The exam asks how far life changed, for whom, and what the people who hated the change thought. This module gives you the evidence on both sides and the interpretation questions that are built on it.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with a date or a figure, because a term without support earns nothing on this paper.

A decade of firsts, in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• German women vote for the first time, in the election to the National Assembly
• The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is released, the film that made German cinema famous
• The Bauhaus moves into its new building at Dessau
• George Grosz paints Pillars of Society
• The Unemployment Insurance Act insures seventeen million workers
• The Threepenny Opera by Brecht and Weill opens in Berlin

Why did the position of women change?

By 1925 women were about a third of the German workforce and sat in every parliament in the country. Which explanation best accounts for the change?

• The constitution of 1919 gave women the vote and equal rights, the war had killed two million men and left women running offices, factories and homes, and the recovery after 1924 created the shop and office jobs that young single women filled.
• The government passed a law requiring employers to hire women.
• American loans under the Dawes Plan were spent on schemes for women.
• The Churches led a campaign for equality.

Two Germanies

The changes were real and they were uneven. The strongest answers can say for whom life changed and for whom it did not.

Question 1: inference from a source

Source A: a description of Pillars of Society, painted by George Grosz in 1926. A student infers that Grosz saw the leaders of the republic as corrupt and warlike. Tap the TWO details that support that inference most directly.

• In the foreground a student with a duelling scar and a monocle holds a beer glass, a swastika pinned to his tie; the top of his skull is open and a mounted knight rides out of it.
• Beside him a journalist holds a newspaper and a palm branch of peace, with a chamber pot on his head.
• A politician of the Social Democrats clutches a flag and a leaflet, and on his open head sits a pile of steaming dung.
• Behind them a clergyman raises his hand in blessing.
• In the background, soldiers set fire to a town.

The standard of living

Select the THREE statements that are true of the standard of living in the years 1924 to 1929.

• The Unemployment Insurance Act of 1927 covered some seventeen million workers, paid for by contributions from workers and employers.
• More than two million new homes were built between 1924 and 1931, many of them by city councils, and homelessness fell sharply.
• Real wages rose in every year from 1924 to 1929.
• Unemployment disappeared during the Golden Years.
• The working day was cut to six hours.
• Farmers gained as much from the recovery as city workers.

How golden? The debate behind the interpretation questions

Question 3 gives you two interpretations and asks how they differ, why, and how far you agree. The two below were written for this module to show the shape of the argument; the exam will print real historians. Interpretation 1. The years 1924 to 1929 transformed German life. Women voted, sat in the Reichstag and filled the offices of the cities; Berlin led the world in cinema, design and theatre; and a welfare state insured seventeen million workers and housed two million families. For the first time the republic delivered. Interpretation 2. The Golden Years were golden for Berlin and for the young. Most women still left work at marriage and earned a third less when they stayed; the countryside stayed poor; unemployment never fell below a million; and the culture the capital was proud of was despised by the Germans who would vote the republic out of existence four years later. They differ because they look at different people: the first at the city and the employed, the second at the countryside, the married and the resentful. The top-level answer says so, and then decides.

Four lives in 1927

Four Germans in the same year. At each step choose what was typical, not what the posters promised.

• A 22-year-old typist in a Berlin insurance office, unmarried, living in a rented room. What does her life most likely look like?
• A Ruhr miner with three children loses his job in a pit closure in the autumn of 1927. What happens?
• A young architect trained at the Bauhaus at Dessau. What does he design, and who objects?
• A Catholic priest in a Bavarian market town reads about the Berlin cabarets and the falling birth rate. What does he preach on Sunday?

From cause to consequence

Because Article _____ made women equal before the law, they voted in January 1919 and 112 of them sat in the Reichstag over the life of the republic. Because the recovery after 1924 created office and shop jobs, the new woman of _____ became possible, though for most women paid work still ended at _____. Because American loans let city councils build, more than _____ million homes went up between 1924 and 1931. And because the birth rate had fallen to 80 per thousand, conservatives read the new freedoms as _____, which the Nazis would later exploit.

Women in the new Reichstag

In January 1919 German women voted for the first time, and 37 women were elected to the 423-seat National Assembly. What percentage of the deputies were women, to the nearest whole number?

Question 3(b): the main difference

Question 3(b) asks: What is the main difference between the two interpretations on the callout card? Explain your answer using both. Which answer would score all four marks?

• Interpretation 1 argues that the Golden Years transformed life for Germans as a whole, whereas Interpretation 2 argues that the change was confined to the cities and the young and passed most Germans by.
• Interpretation 1 mentions women, cinema and welfare. Interpretation 2 mentions the countryside and unemployment.
• I agree with Interpretation 2 because most women still left work when they married.
• Both interpretations agree that Berlin changed a great deal.

A 12-mark paragraph, marked

Question 2: Explain why the position of women in Germany changed in the years 1924 to 1929. One reason for the change was the economic recovery that followed the Dawes Plan of 1924. American loans rebuilt German industry and paid for new offices, department stores and city services, and the jobs those created were of a new kind: typing, filing, serving and teaching rather than heavy labour. Employers preferred young single women for them because they could be paid less, about a third less than men for the same work. This meant that by 1925 some 11.5 million women were in paid employment, many of them in the cities, earning their own money for the first time and spending it on the cinema, the dance hall and the short haircut that became the image of the decade. The recovery did not give women equality, but it gave a generation of them independence, and that is what changed their position. What earned the marks: a cause named in the first sentence; specific support (Dawes, the kinds of job, the pay gap, the 11.5 million); the link phrase this meant that; and a final sentence that returns to the question and qualifies the change. Two more paragraphs, on the constitution of 1919 and on the war, and the answer reaches the top level.

Write the 12-mark answer

Explain why there were changes in German culture in the years 1924 to 1929. You may use the following in your answer: the Bauhaus; cinema. You must also use information of your own.

• Support that counts: a date, a name, a work or a figure
• Causes of your own: the end of imperial censorship, the money of the recovery, the experience of the war, or the new audiences in the cities

Question 3(d): how far do you agree?

Question 3(d) asks how far you agree with Interpretation 2, that the Golden Years passed most Germans by. Which piece of evidence gives that interpretation its strongest support?

• The position of most women: of the 11.5 million at work in 1925 the majority left at marriage, those who stayed earned about a third less, and the new woman of the Berlin office was a minority even in Berlin.
• The Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925.
• Seventeen million workers were insured against unemployment in 1927.
• Metropolis cost five million marks to make.