THE GOLDEN AGE
CULTURE
Portrayal of culture in Weimar Germany during 'The Golden Age'
Culture in Germany
Portrayal of culture in Weimar Germany during 'The Golden Age'
“Our task would be hopeless if the present situation in Germany accurately reflected her potential capacity."
Report of the Dawes Committee, 1924
Gustav Stresemann was elevated to the chancellorship. Stresemann and his ministers formulated plans to arrest the hyperinflation crisis by introducing a new currency, the Rentenmark, and fixed its value to gold prices.
The years 1924-29 are often described as the ‘Golden Age of Weimar’ because of their stability, economic security and improved living standards – at least in relation to previous years.
The government announced its determination to meet reparations payments and sought international assistance to do so. The US-led Dawes Plan was finalised in April 1924 and implemented four months later.
Between 1924 and 1929 the dying German economy was injected with more than $25 billion of foreign money.
The economic revival of the mid-1920s enabled the introduction of social reforms and better standards of living. The SPD re-introduced and overhauled the Bismarckian welfare state, providing protection for the young, the aged, the unemployed and disadvantaged.
The Weimar economic miracle did not benefit everyone. The Mittelstand (middle class) found little joy in this alleged ‘golden age’. Bankrupted by the hyperinflation of 1923, the professional middle classes – managers, bureaucrats, bankers and clerks – did not enter the ‘golden age’ in a position of strength and failed to benefit from most of its changes.
YOUNG PEOPLE
“The foreign policy which the government has pursued since the end of the war rejects the idea of revenge. Its purpose is rather the achievement of a mutual understanding.”
Chancellor Wilhelm Marx, February 1927
Young people were beginning to break through the constraints of education, religion and even family. Children and teenagers were getting into dangerous lives of crimes and anti-social behaviour.
Most children from working class families left school at the age of 14 and began to take up apprenticeships. Some became employed quickly.
Germany prided itself on education. There were very few private schools in Germany. The classes were divided, even in education.
Education reformers in the Weimar republic aimed to break down these divides and provide a comprehensive, non-sectarian education that would be free to all pupils these reforms were only partially successful. The reformes did introduce elementary schools however.
In the years 1925-1926, 17 per cent of people that were unemployed were from the age of 14 to 21.
Young people were beginning to break through the constraints of education, religion and even family. Children and teenagers were getting into dangerous lives of crimes and anti-social behaviour.
Both the Catholic and Protestant churches successfully defended their right to promote religious teachings through the state education system - supported by their respective political parties.