gradually became committed to the Republic, intellectually rather than emotionally (as the German phrase Vernunftrepublikaner implied). Despite the frequent changes of governmental coalition during the Weimar Republic, Stresemann retained the position of foreign minister until his death in October 1929. During this period he made a major contribution to the stabilization of the Republic as far as foreign affairs were concerned – which, as it sadly turned out, was in the end not quite far enough.
The Versailles Treaty had left a number of outstanding problems. It was clear after the catastrophes of 1923 that the issue of reparations would have to be reconsidered. In 1924 the Dawes Plan was adopted, which aided both German economic recovery and American expansionist economic policies. Essentially postponing a final settlement, this plan allowed Germany a breathing space before full reparations would be payable, with payment staggered over four years before reaching a maximum level in the fifth year. For Germany, it also meant considerable economic dependence on short-term loans from abroad, particularly from America. In the early phases only one-fifth would be paid from Germany’s own resources, while four-fifths were to come from international ‘start-up’ loans. Stresemann was quite clear about the difficulties this would entail for the weak German economy but felt that the potential benefits of normalization of relations with France in particular outweighed the obvious and serious economic problems involved.
In July 1925 the Rhineland began to be cleared and French troops started to leave the Ruhr. After long negotiations, in October 1925, the Locarno Pact was signed by representatives of Germany, Belgium, Britain, France and Italy. France also signed separate agreements with Poland and Czechoslovakia. Locarno guaranteed the frontiers between Germany and France and between Germany and Belgium, and its parties mutually renounced the use of force or invasion of each other’s territory except in self-defence. Since the militarily emasculated Germany was in no position to use force, and since Locarno entailed further recognition of the validity of the Treaty of Versailles as well as appearing to favour good relations with Germany’s Western neighbours at the expense of relations with Russia, the agreement provoked highly hostile responses from both left- and right-wingers at home. On the other hand, Locarno appeared to mark the beginning of the re-entry of Germany into a community of nations seeking a framework for peace and security in Europe, and it paved the way for Germany’s entry into the League of Nations in September 1926.
Partly to reassure domestic opinion and partly to reaffirm Germany’s position vis-à-vis Russia, Stresemann concluded with Russia the Berlin Treaty of 1926. This confirmed the Rapallo Treaty of 1922, concluded when Walther Rathenau (who was assassinated after the treaty was signed) was foreign minister. Rapallo had reestablished diplomatic relations between Germany and Russia, and the two powers had mutually renounced claims to reparations or compensation. This foreign policy initiative, which aroused considerable resentment among Western powers (who were suspicious of a special relationship between Germany and Russia), had also included a secret military agreement allowing German remilitarization inside the territory of the USSR. In the Berlin Treaty of 1926 Russia and Germany reassured each other of their friendly relations, and committed themselves to remaining neutral in the event of the other country being at war with a third power or powers. This meant that if, for example, Poland and Russia were at war, France would not be able to come to Poland’s help via German territory. Stresemann was anxious to reassure his opponents at home that Germany was not exclusively Western-orientated in her foreign policy but rather could act as a peace-keeping bridge in the centre of Europe between West and East. It was nevertheless clear that Poland’s position was weak, and the issue of Germany’s eastern frontiers was left sufficiently open to give hope to revisionists in Germany that changes might yet be effected on that front.
In January 1927 the allied military commission overseeing the post-Versailles disarmament of Germany was withdrawn. The reparations question was reopened, as the ‘normal’ years of full reparations payments, 1928–9, drew closer. In August 1929 the Young Plan revised the reparations schedule yet again, setting a new total figure and a reduced annual average of reparations payments. This was met with an intense campaign of domestic opposition – in which the Nazis gained some respectability and free publicity by associating themselves with conservative nationalists in the DNVP. But the referendum ‘against the enslavement of the German people’ failed to win the required 21 million votes (receiving the acclamation of ‘only’ 5.83 million). In the event, under the Young Plan, foreign controls were to be removed and the Rhineland evacuated by the Allied powers in June 1930, five years earlier than envisaged in the Versailles Treaty. To moderate observers, it might appear that under Stresemann’s guidance, a considerable amount had been achieved: reparations had been renegotiated to a more manageable level, Germany’s relations with her former enemies and neighbours had been regularized, the Ruhr and Rhineland had been evacuated, Germany had been accepted into the League of Nations – and at the same time there still appeared to be the possibility of reconsidering Germany’s eastern frontiers, thus pursuing revisionist aims in a peaceful manner. From a Polish perspective, developments were less acceptable, serving to marginalize its international position and heighten hostility between Germany and Poland.
Many observers in the Weimar Republic were far from moderate. Each of the measures negotiated under Stresemann was highly contentious. Moreover, under the facade of apparent stabilization there were many cracks, both political and economic. In the period of renewed crisis after 1929 these cracks were to turn into an earthquake, bringing the shaky edifice of Weimar democracy tumbling down in ruins. We shall consider the intrinsic domestic weaknesses of the Weimar Republic as they affected its eventual collapse in the next chapter. In the meantime, however, on another front ‘Weimar culture’ was beginning to achieve international renown.
The Golden Twenties? Society and Culture in the Weimar Republic
Many people who know little more about the politics of the Weimar Republic than that it ended with the rise of Hitler may know a great deal about ‘Weimar culture’. Many of the currents we associate with Weimar had their roots in the prewar period, with the shifting paradigms of the turn of the century, associated with thinkers such as Sigmund Freud. But the experience of mechanized mass slaughter and suffering during the war, the perception of living in a ‘machine age’ with all its human costs and the social upheavals and deep political rifts of the early postwar years precipitated a series of more radical engagements. Artists, writers, social theorists and activists challenged received ways of thinking, and explored new sorts of interpretation and modes of representation of a rapidly changing world. Technological advances also played a major role in the changing patterns of culture at this time. Virtually all the tendencies associated with Weimar were part of wider, international currents at the time; and the shattering of this ferment of creativity with the Nazi clampdown, and the enforced exile of so many talented individuals, ironically ensured that this cultural ferment in Germany was to be of lasting international significance.
The Weimar years, brief though this political epoch was, saw an explosion of creativity across a wide range of scientific and artistic fields. The German traditions of research in medicine and the natural sciences, particularly physics and chemistry, and more recent expertise in psychology and psychoanalysis, continued to develop apace. Despite the later distortions and deeply unethical uses to which such theories were put under the Nazis, fields such as eugenics were widely shared across Europe and North America at this time. In the social sciences, where thinkers such as Max Weber, Georg Simmel and others had already made extensive contributions, new twists were added by the ‘Frankfurt School’ of Critical Theory. Theorists such as Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin sought to use theory not simply as description and understanding of immutable laws in order to control the world, as in the tradition of the Enlightenment, but rather as a critique of contemporary conditions, an exploration of transformative potential and a challenge to contemporary mass culture, in service of what they saw as emancipation. This school of social theory, forced into exile in the Nazi period, was subsequently rediscovered in the 1960s by younger American and European social theorists, influenced particularly by the ageing Herbert Marcuse and by a second generation of critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas. In the visual arts, tendencies existing before
