The Weimar Era (Germany in the '20s)

<%=ShowInline(11,"right","1")%>After World War I, both Austria and Germany experienced revolutions that deposed imperial regimes and replaced them with social-democratic governments. The Weimar era--named for the city where the new German government was inaugurated--was known both for liberalism and decadence. The promise of a socialist revolution was soon belied by corruption, poverty and the political infighting that eventually paved the way for Hitler. Artists of the period--usually allied with the political left--portrayed both the hopes and the problems of their day.

The art of the Weimar era overlaps with the Expressionist era that preceded it, and some scholars refer to the Weimar artists as "Second-Generation" Expressionists. Stylistic similarities notwithstanding, whoever, most of the artists who came of age in the 1920s disdained Expressionist preciousness. The early part of the decade was characterized by overt political activism, and the outright nihilism of the Dada movement. By the mid '20s, however, a new style known as Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity) had emerged. Neue Sachlichkeit artists practiced a kind of eerie realism which lent itself both to social critique and to the creation of pristine, idealized scenes.