Weimar's Others: Art History, Alterity and Regionalism in Inter-War Germany

On the centenary of the establishment of modern Germany’s first democratic republic, this special issue explores how the wealth of scholarship on Weimar culture from the last two and a half decades, since re-unification, has contributed specifically to the discipline of art history and vice versa. It interrogates where art historical research on the Weimar Republic might be heading. What role, if any, do the Republic’s intellectuals, artists and cultural producers continue to play in the present? The issue explores the cultural practices, production and reception of art from across Germany’s towns, cities and rural provinces. It includes in-depth analyses of art made by historiographically under-represented Berlin-based women Lotte Laserstein and Jeanne Mammen, as well as by regionally-based artists by Elsa Haensgen-Dingkuhn, Gela Forster and Heinrich Hoerle, whose work is less known. It also includes essays on the overlooked material and iconographic contexts for the Merz collages of the more celebrated Kurt Schwitters, as well as in-depth research on the production and appearance of Notgeld - the vast sums of emergency money that were produced during Germany’s period of hyper-inflation, between 1914 and 1923.