Weimar recovery and Stresemann, 1924-1929.

• Weimar recovery and Stresemann, 1924-1929: Gustav Stresemann who became Chancellor in August 1923 during the hyperinflation crisis. This was a time when prices in Germany went up quicker than people could spend their money and the German currency lost its value.
• How Stresemann achieved the end of hyperinflation: Calling off the ‘passive resistance’ of German workers in the Ruhr. This helped Germany’s economy because goods were back in production and the Government could stop printing money to pay striking workers.
• How Stresemann achieved the end of hyperinflation: Promising to begin reparations payments again. This persuaded France and Belgium to end the occupation of the Ruhr by 1925.
• How Stresemann achieved the end of hyperinflation: Introducing a new currency called the Rentenmark. This stabilised prices as only a limited number were printed meaning money rose in value. This helped to restore confidence in the German economy.
• How Stresemann achieved the end of hyperinflation: Reducing the amount of money the government spent (700,000 government employees lost their jobs) so that its budget deficit reduced.
• Renegotiating reparations (The Dawes plan, 1924): Amount of reparations to be paid - Stayed the same overall (50 billion Marks) but Germany only had to pay one billion Marks per year for the first five years and 2.5 billion per year after that.
• Renegotiating reparations (The Dawes plan, 1924): Amount of time the reparations would be paid in - Indefinite.
• Renegotiating reparations (The Dawes plan, 1924): Loans - Germany was loaned 800 million Marks from the USA
• Renegotiating reparations (The Young plan 1930): Amount of reparations to be paid - Reduced the total amount by 20 per cent. Germany was to pay two billion Marks per year, two thirds of which could be postponed each year if necessary.
• Renegotiating reparations (The Young plan 1930): Amount of time the reparations had to be paid in.
• Renegotiating reparations (The Young plan 1930): Loans - US banks would continue to loan Germany money, coordinated by J P Morgan, one of the world’s leading bankers.
• Did the Weimar economy recover?: Signs of recovery - By 1928 industrial production levels were higher than those of 1913 (before World War One) and between 1925 and 1929 exports rose by 40 per cent.
• Did the Weimar economy recover?: Signs of recovery - Hourly wages rose every year from 1924 to 1929 and by 10 per cent in 1928 alone as well as IG Farben, a German chemical manufacturing company, became the largest industrial company in Europe.
• Did the Weimar economy recover?: Signs of recovery - Generous pension, health and unemployment insurance schemes were introduced from 1927.
• Did the Weimar economy recover?: Signs of continued weakness - Agricultural production did not recover to its pre-war levels and it spent more on imports than it earned from exports, so Germany was losing money every year. Also, unemployment did not fall below 1.3 million and in 1929 increased to 1.9 million.
• Did the Weimar economy recover?: Signs of continued weakness - German industry became dependent upon loans from the USA and the government ended up spending more than it received in taxes and so continued to run deficits from 1925 onwards
• The Locarno treaty (1925): Germany, France and Belgium agreed to respect their post-Versailles borders. Germany had previously complained bitterly about their loss of territory, but now the Germans were accepting the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to France. France also had to respect their frontier with Germany, which meant no more ‘invasions of the Ruhr’ like the one in 1923.
• The Locarno treaty (1925): The Locarno guarantee of frontiers only applied to Western Europe. Germany’s frontiers in the east were regarded as negotiable, and this gave Stresemann the opportunity in future to negotiate the frontiers with Poland and Czechoslovakia in particular.
• Germany joining the LON (1926): By signing the Locarno Treaties, Germany showed that it was accepting the Versailles settlement and so a year later was accepted as a permanent member of the Council of League, making it one of the most powerful countries in the League.
• The Kellogg-brand pact (1928): By signing the Locarno Treaties, Germany showed that it was accepting the Versailles settlement and so a year later was accepted as a permanent member of the Council of League, making it one of the most powerful countries in the League.
• International relations: Stresemann continued to maintain good relations with the Soviet Union, and signed the Treaty of Berlin in 1926. This Soviet-German agreement renewed the Treaty of Rapallo that they had signed back in 1922. As well as promoting economic co-operation, this treaty set up the opportunity for Germany to secretly build up its armed forces on Soviet territory, so the Allies couldn’t find out about this breach of the Versailles treaty.
• Education and Intellectual life: Science - Towering figures like Max Plank and Albert Einstein worked in Germany in the 1920s, and Einstein received his Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.
• Education and Intellectual life: Philosophy - One of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, Martin Heidegger, published his major work Being and Time in 1927. The political philosophers Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss received their university education in Germany during the Weimar period.
• Visual arts: The Bauhaus school - Bauhaus’ impact on German architecture was limited because the movement only focused on architecture after 1927 and it was then suppressed by the Nazis in 1933. After this most of its followers fled abroad, where they developed their work further.
• Visual arts: Dada - The Dada movement started in Zurich during World War One. It was a protest against the traditional conventions of art and western culture, in which the war had begun. Its output included photography, sculpture, poetry, painting and collage. Artists included Marcel Duchamp and Hans Arp.
• Visual arts: New Objectivity - The New Objectivity movement started in Germany in the aftermath of World War One. It challenged its predecessor, Expressionism, which was a more idealistic and romantic movement. Artists returned to a more realistic way of painting, reflecting the harsh reality of war. Artists included Otto Dix and George Grosz.
• Visual arts: Experimentation in German art came to an end when the Nazis came to power in 1933. Hitler rejected modern art as morally corrupt and many of the best German artists – some of whom were Jewish – fled abroad.
• Music: Modern classical -  Composers like Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill and Alan Berg composed classical pieces and operas.
• Music: Jazz - The increasing influence of American culture brought jazz music to Berlin and Munich, with classical composers often crossing over into what was known as ‘atonal’ music, or jazz.
• Music: Cabaret -  This became popular in Berlin, where young people could sit around in clubs, drinking and watching musical performances.
• Cinema: The economic disruption of the Weimar period produced an expressionist style in German film-making, with films often having unrealistic sets and featuring exaggerated acting techniques.
• Cinema: The shortage of funding gave rise to the Kammerspielfilm movement, with atmospheric films made on small sets with low budgets.
• Cinema: Expressionist film-makers favoured darker storylines and themes, including horror and crime.
• After World War One, Berlin became a place where behaviour previously thought of as immoral flourished:

  • cabarets became known as places where transvestites and openly gay men and women could visit, despite homosexuality being illegal at the time
  • prostitution, which had grown during World War One, flourished
  • the city acquired a reputation for drug dealing
  • organised crime, and gangs called Ringvereine, grew
• The Nazis disapproved of what they viewed as the immoral behaviour flourishing in Germany’s cities. The totalitarian nature of the regime meant that cultural life, such as the theatre, music and film, came under the control of Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda.