Shows
The Weimar SpectacleThe collapse of Democracy and the rise of Fascism, is that what's happening today?Every time I read the news, someone is saying the current situation is like the end of the Weimar Republic and the beginning of Fascism. I’m not sure about that, but I thought it might be worth an episode. I take a look at the first 100 or so days of Trump in the USA, and the actual events at the end of the Weimar Republic. Is the destruction of a democracy, the rise of the Nazis and Hitler's seizure of power just like the current state of affairs in the USA? 2025-06-2428 minThe Weimar SpectacleIntellectual Impresario of Weimar Berlin: Sexologist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, "The Einstein Of Sex"Today I’m interviewing Daniel Brook, the author of a new book on the pioneering sexual rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld, whose Berlin Institute of Sexual Science was a huge attraction in Weimar Berlin and was eventually destroyed by the Nazis, and whose theories are so contemporary they could be taken directly from modern debates about gender, sexuality, race and freedom.Magnus Hirschfeld (14 May 1868 – 14 May 1935) was a Jewish German physician, sexologist and LGBTQ+ advocate, whose German citizenship was later revoked by the Nazi government. Hirschfeld was educated in philosophy, philology and medicine. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirs...2025-05-101h 21The Weimar SpectacleDegenerate Art, Hitler's failed culture war and greatest modern art show everOn 30 June 1937, Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister for Propaganda and Enlightenment, authorised the Director of the Reich Chamber for Culture, Adolf Ziegler, to select and confiscate paintings and sculptures from public collections for a major exhibition on 'degenerate art'. Ziegler said “What's been gathered together in [this] exhibition constitutes the portrayal of a true witches' sabbath and the most frivolous spiritual-artistic cultural bolshevism and a portrayal of the triumph of subhumanity, of arrogant Jewish insolence and total spiritual senile dementia.”This was the infamous exhibition entitled "Entartete Kunst," or "Degenerate Art," in Munich. The objective was to ridi...2025-03-2732 minThe Weimar SpectacleGeorge Grosz + John Heartfield: avant-garde, anti-fascist artistsGeorge Grosz was a German artist known especially for his political cartoons and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity groups during the Weimar Republic. He emigrated to the United States in 1933, and became a naturalized citizen in 1938. John Heartfield was a German visual artist who pioneered the use of art as a political weapon. Some of his most famous photo-montages were anti-Nazi and anti-fascist statements and he was hunted relentlessly by the Gestapo for his art and politics. John Heartfield said: " There are a lo...2025-03-1036 minThe Weimar SpectacleWill the real Sally Bowles please stand up? Cabaret, the musical, the real lives behind it“Berlin was in a state of civil war. Hate exploded suddenly, without warning, out of nowhere; at street corners, in restaurants, cinemas, dance halls, swimming-baths; at midnight, after breakfast, in the middle of the afternoon ... From 1929 to 1933, I lived almost continuously in Berlin, with only occasional visits to other parts of Germany and to England. Already, during that time, I had made up my mind that I would one day write about the people I’d met and the experiences I was having. So I kept a detailed diary, which in due course provided raw material for all my Berl...2025-01-111h 08The Weimar SpectacleThe economic crisis that changed the world: Hyperinflation's catastropheOn Oct 15th, 1923, Berlin resident Betty Scholem wrote to her son: “Conditions have taken a catastrophic turn here. This letter cost 15 million marks to send...and it will be 30 million beginning the day after tomorrow.” She estimated household expenses in the billions as the monthly rate of inflation approached 30,000 percent. In 1913, one US dollar was worth roughly 4 German marks. By November, 1923 in Germany, ten years later, hyper-inflation had pushed one US dollar to be worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks. And by then it was quite common to be carrying around a one billion mark banknote. The journey through this hyperi...2024-11-261h 10