The Weimar Moment

The Weimar Moment’s evocative assault on closure and political reaction, its offering of democracy against the politics of narrow self-interest cloaked in nationalist appeals to Volk and “community” – or, as would be the case in Nazi Germany, “race” – cannot but appeal to us today. This appeal –its historical grounding and content, its complexities and tensions, its variegated expressions across the networks of power and thought – is the essential context of the present volume, whose basic premi