
The Weimar Spectacle
Exploring the extraordinary and astonishing social, political and cultural life of the Weimar Republic.
Produced by Bremner Fletcher, singer, actor and kabarett artist and obsessive lover of Weimar culture and history: http://www.bremnersings.com
Episodes
10 episodes
'Degenerate Art': Hitler's failed culture war
On 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 majo...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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32:12

George Grosz and John Heartfield: the power of radical talent
George 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 Unit...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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36:04

Will the real Sally Bowles please stand up? Brian Fairbanks uncovers the extraordinary lives that inspired the musical Cabaret
“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...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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1:08:15

The Incredible Drama of Weimar Hyperinflation: the economic crisis that changed the world
On 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...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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1:10:25

Building the Dream, The Utopian Realism of Weimar Architecture
“Let us consciously be ‘imaginary architects’! We believe that only a total revolution can guide us in our task. Our fellow citizens, even our colleagues quite rightly suspect in us the forces of revolution. Break up an...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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34:52

Brecht Banter: a whiskey-fueled, kitchen-table conversation on Brecht, Weimar and New Orleans
What do you get when you mix a bottle of Laphroaig Whiskey with three charming Weimar raconteurs? A freewheeling conversation that touches on the disturbing, occasionally hopeful, similarities of the Weimar period with our own days, the endurin...
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Season 1
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Episode 5
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1:12:00

Kurt Weill, Weimar Musical Revolutionary
Many years ago, I started my musical career singing, or maybe I should say screaming, with a Punk band, then eventually, through some very complicated in-between steps, I ended singing Opera, then on to musical theatre, then swinging it with ja...
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Season 1
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Episode 4
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36:00

All Change Is Revolutionary: the Radical Roots of the Weimar Republic
On October 29th, 1918, only a few days before the official end of WW1, in Kiel, a naval port on Germany’s northern coast, sailors in the German Imperial Navy staged a mutiny that would spark revolutions across Germany, would lead to the formati...
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Season 1
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Episode 3
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23:23

Weimar In The Bedroom: Revolutionary Sexuality
We’re going to leap into some of the fun, crazy and sometimes completely mad of the Weimar days, i.e. the wild sexual revolution that appeared in in Berlin and to a lesser degree across Germany. My big idea for this episode is that in Post-WW1 ...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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31:57

Why Give A Damn About The Weimar Republic?
In this first episode we'll take a quick overview of birth, brief life and death of the Weimar Republic and ask the big, big question: 'Why care about a failed European state that only lasted 14 years and was a hot mess from the start'....
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Season 1
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Episode 1
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12:01
