The Weimar Republic has received more attention in academic research and popular culture than
almost any other period in German history. Nevertheless its prevailing historical image
remains surprisingly simplistic: it is often seen as an era of accelerated cultural progress on
the one hand and extreme political unrest social upheaval and economic crisis on the other a
view epitomized in the ubiquitous image of the ¿dance on the volcano¿. The authors gathered in
this volume aim to move the discussion beyond this limited dichotomy. Their essays cover a wide
range from Weimar¿s legal framework to musical theatre each challenging hitherto accepted
views in its respective field. Despite their thematic range and differences in approach the
contributions are united by the common theme of contingency. They posit the idea of Weimar¿s
historical ¿openness¿ reflected in the period¿s pluralism as a counter-narrative to the image
of the first German democracy as a moribund mixture of modernist glitter and socio-economic
doom.
