Laboratory Weimar: Constellations in Culture, Politics, Society 1918 - 1933

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sabina Becker
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2017 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 329653924

The aim of my research project, which is to be completed in the anniversary year 2018, is to work on a monograph on the culture and literature of the Weimar Republic. The distinctly historico-cultural study, which integrates findings from my research on the period from the past 15 years , is a topical contribution to the research in this field. The project starts off with the finding that there exists varied historico-cultural research on the Weimar Republic from the past two decades, yet, while there are contributions from history studies, there is no comprehensive study on this pivotal age in German history from the perspective of cultural and literary studies. There are studies from the 1960s and 1970s on the topic, yet a more recent study is missing; there has not yet been made a contribution on this crucial period in German cultural and literary history from the field of German studies in Germany. The monograph will, on the one hand, provide an overview of the culture and literature of that period. On the other hand, it will set new impulses, especially with regard to the phenomenon of the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous and with that, the differences between political development and cultural modernization; furthermore, the Weimar period will be assessed as part of the overall context of societal and cultural modernity in the 20th century.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants