Vol. 20 · No. 1 · Issue 62 · Spring 2002 · pp. 114-121 (8)
"Not Yet"
Weimar and the Alluring Promise of a Future Past

Brett R. Wheeler

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Abstract

Janet Ward, Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)

Bernd Widdig, Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)

These compelling new books by Janet Ward and Bernd Widdig do little to weaken the magic of Weimar. To the contrary, they link anew the decade after World War I with the spirit of our own age and with the experiences and self-consciousness of postmodern culture. At the same time, this link continues to reveal nostalgia, as scholars ask permission to imagine a future other than the one that is now past.