Vertigo by Jahner is undoubtedly the best work on Weimar I have read over decades. The author addresses all elements of what led up to, and operated during, and led to the Nazi takeover. The author covers social, economic, political and intellectual areas.
Germany was in chaos after the defeat for a variety of reasons. The author presents the Spartacists and Rosa Luxemburg with great clarity. I recall in the 60s when the local SDS chapter at MIT was called the Rosa Luxemburg chapter. For years I had no idea who she was until I spent time with a business partner and close friend, Pietr Mroczk, a Solidarity member and their voice in the US. Over drinks in Warsaw I got to understand Rosa. As the author describes her accurately, she could be a Socialist, Marxist, Communist all in one day. Her true goal appeared to be an anarchist, using the rubric of her left wing ideas as the battering ram. She and her colleagues led to the early battles between left and right and the death of many as a result, including her own.
The author presents an excellent overview of the political leadership, its vacillations and collapses. Ending with old man Hindenburg and leading to Hitler. The author presents an excellent overview of the vacuous architects and their followers. Bauhaus et al led to blank and bland society as well.
The author presents the life of young women drawn into the work world and the libertine life styles all too well known in Weimar.
What is a bit missing is what we Germany before the War that allowed for this type of seismic change. Unlike the US, for example, Germany was a class society, not like the UK but more in the serf like Middle Ages. How that effected the social change is unknown in this work.
Also missing is the explosion of academic excellence. Germany was the bastion of such things as Chemistry, especially Organic Chemistry. As any student of Organic Chemistry in the US feels, the reactions developed in Germany were done just to force others to memorized hundreds of reactions which frankly would best be left on paper. Yet Germany was also the home of Quantum mechanics as well as early constructs of nuclear theory. This part of the Weimar period would have been of interest.
Overall this book is a sine qua non, other works delight in the hedonism of the period failing to ply together all elements that resulted in the Nazi era.
More importantly this work may give us a glimpse of what can happen to society is massive internal dissension and economic strife.
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