Topics in European Culture and History: Wagner, Nietzsche and the German Catastrophe

In this course we will examine the catastrophic collision of tradition and modernity in the Weimar Republic (1919-1933). We will trace the evolution of Germany's politics of Kultur in the decades preceding WW I. The modernist explosion of the Weimar period forms the centerpiece of the course. We will conclude with a consideration of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. In addition to films and a wide range of musical works, readings will include: Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair; Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain; Gay, Weimar Culture; Hitler, Mein Kampf; Rees, The Nazis; Heinrich Mann, Mephisto. 3 hr. lect./disc., screen.