Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

List of Abbreviations

Chapter 1 Introduction: Weimar Germany and the Cultures of Capitalist Modernity

1.1 Rethinking Weimar History

1.2 Weimar Germany: The Crises of Capitalist Modernity

1.3 Degeneration, Embodiment, and the Politics of Culture: A Marxist Perspective

1.4 The Structure of the Book

Chapter 2 Degeneration: Gender, War, and the Politics of the Volkskörper

2.1 Introduction

2.2 August 1914

2.3 Women’s Protests and Left Politics

2.4 Masculinity, War, and the Cultural Politics of the Weimar Radical Right

Chapter 3 Revolution: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Question of Totality

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Nostalgia and Shock

3.3 Art, Politics, and Revolution

3.4 Expressionism and After

3.5 Totality

Chapter 4 Bodies and Minds: Art and the Politics of Degeneration

4.1 Introduction

4.2 (De)militarised Bodies: Art and Gender after War

4.3 The Prostitute

4.4 The Prosthetic Man: The Wounded or Disabled Veteran

4.5 Outsider Art: Asylums and the Cultural Politics of Madness

4.6 Primitivism, the Body, and Colonial Nostalgia

Chapter 5 Transforming Vision: Film, Photography, and the Politics of Social Hygiene

5.1 Introduction: The Birth of Homo Cinematicus

5.2 The Photo-Eye: New Modes of Vision

5.3 The Primitive Spectator: Race, Gender, Class, and the Weimar Audience

5.4 Optical Hygiene: Sanitising Vision

5.5 Racial Aesthetics: Photography, Film, and the Weimar Body

Chapter 6 Revolution and the Degeneration of the Weimar Republic: Worker Culture and the Rise of Fascism

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Towards a Worker Culture

6.3 ‘We Are the Eyes of Our Class!’: Workers’ Photography and Film

6.4 Proletarian Theatre and the Fight for the Streets

6.5 Radical Cultures of the Body: The Left and the Struggle over Abortion

6.6 In the Shadow of Fascism: Brecht, the Left, and the End of the Weimar Republic

References

Index