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Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

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This thesis investigates how societal change is represented and negotiated in Weimar Republic journals. I advance the idea that journals serve as unique crystallisations of the negotiation of social change within social communities due to their inherent periodicity, polyphony and materiality. I elucidate how these journals function, both as material objects with their own specific identities and within Weimar society more generally. To do so, I examine six selected journals: Die Weltbühne, Kladderadatsch, Simplicissimus, Die Gartenkunst, Sport im Bild and Fürs Haus. Together, these journals cover a wide range of bourgeois communities, exemplifying a multiplicity of strategies in order to negotiate the challenges posed by modernisation to their communal identities as well as to the individual identities of their creators and readers. This thesis thus establishes a history of small steps visible in the continuous development of the journals' content and material form, offering an understanding of history as a continuous development of social practices rather than a history of caesuras and breaks. Accordingly, I propose that journals tell us about culture, their material Eigenlogik setting them apart from newspaper and book alike. I then develop a notion of culture as dynamic and of journal communities as communities of practice. Next, I provide a case study of the Simplicissimus's communal practices materialised in shifts of its editorial content and material form, before generalising these findings to include non-authorial voices in advertisements and letters to the editor. Finally, I investigate the negotiation of modernisation in the form of sport and the "New Woman" in the journals, highlighting the concurrency of discourse and active participation, and the coexistence of rejection and incorporation. Ultimately, Weimar journal communities exhibit a continuity of social practices and identities that span from the Kaiserreich to Nazi Germany, both negotiating and furthering modernisation in the process.

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Between 1914 and 1919, Germans and Austrians experienced previously unimaginable sociopolitical transformations: four years of war, military defeat, the collapse of the Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies, the creation of democratic republics, and the redrawing of the map of Central Europe. Through an analysis of new state symbols and the staging of political and cultural celebrations, this dissertation explores the multiple and conflicting ways in which Germans and Austrians sought to reconceptualize the relationships between nation, state and politics in the wake of the First World War. Whereas the political right argued that democracy was a foreign imposition, supporters of democracy in both countries went to great lengths to refute these claims. In particular, German and Austrian republicans endeavored to link their fledgling democracies to the established tradition of großdeutsch nationalism – the idea that a German nation-state should include Austria – in an attempt to legitimize their embattled republics. By using nineteenth-century großdeutsch symbols and showing continued support for an Anschluss (political union) even after the Entente forbade it, republicans hoped to create a transborder German national community that would be compatible with a democratic body politic. As a project that investigates the entangled and comparative histories of Germany and Austria, this dissertation makes three contributions to the study of German nationalism and modern Central European history. First, in revealing the pervasiveness of großdeutsch ideas and symbols at this time, I point to the necessity of looking at both Germany and Austria when considering topics such as the redefinition of national identity and the creation of democracy in post-World War I Central Europe. Second, it highlights the need to move beyond the binary categorizations of civic and ethnic nationalisms, which place German nationalism in the latter category. As the republicans’ use of großdeutsch nationalism demonstrates, the creation of a transborder German community was not simply the work of the extreme political right. Third, it contributes to recent scholarship which seeks to move past the entrenched question of why interwar German and Austrian democracies failed. Instead of simply viewing the two republics as failures, it investigates the ways in which citizens engaged with the new form of government, as well as the prospects for the success of democracy in the wake of military defeat. In drawing attention to the differences between the German and Austrian experiments with democracy, this dissertation points to the relative strengths of the Weimar Republic when compared to the First Austrian Republic.

Thesis advisor: Devin Pendas / Ernst Juenger lived through almost the entire 20th century. This longevity has placed him at the center of many of the most defining moments of modern German history. It is not, however, simply his longevity but his attitudes that have caused such a controversy to grow up around him. A staunch nationalist and one might venture to say, war-monger, during the First World War and a virulent enemy of the Weimar Republic, many historians have classified him as a Nazi author. This thesis explores the relationsihp of Ernst Juenger to the National Socialists in the context of his writing and political leanings between the First World War and the end of the Second. Without understanding the integral differences between his ideology and that of the NSDAP (namely their divergence on the issues of racial purity, parliamentarianism, communism, the use of power, and the position of art)one cannot appreciate his place in history and his perspective on Germany. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2006. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Between 1914 and 1919, Germans and Austrians experienced previously unimaginable sociopolitical transformations: four years of war, military defeat, the collapse of the Hohenzollern and Habsburg monarchies, the creation of democratic republics, and the redrawing of the map of Central Europe. Through an analysis of new state symbols and the staging of political and cultural celebrations, this dissertation explores the multiple and conflicting ways in which Germans and Austrians sought to reconceptualize the relationships between nation, state and politics in the wake of the First World War. Whereas the political right argued that democracy was a foreign imposition, supporters of democracy in both countries went to great lengths to refute these claims. In particular, German and Austrian republicans endeavored to link their fledgling democracies to the established tradition of großdeutsch nationalism – the idea that a German nation-state should include Austria – in an attempt to legitimize their embattled republics. By using nineteenth-century großdeutsch symbols and showing continued support for an Anschluss (political union) even after the Entente forbade it, republicans hoped to create a transborder German national community that would be compatible with a democratic body politic. As a project that investigates the entangled and comparative histories of Germany and Austria, this dissertation makes three contributions to the study of German nationalism and modern Central European history. First, in revealing the pervasiveness of großdeutsch ideas and symbols at this time, I point to the necessity of looking at both Germany and Austria when considering topics such as the redefinition of national identity and the creation of democracy in post-World War I Central Europe. Second, it highlights the need to move beyond the binary categorizations of civic and ethnic nationalisms, which place German nationalism in the latter category. As the republicans’ use of großdeutsch nationalism demonstrates, the creation of a transborder German community was not simply the work of the extreme political right. Third, it contributes to recent scholarship which seeks to move past the entrenched question of why interwar German and Austrian democracies failed. Instead of simply viewing the two republics as failures, it investigates the ways in which citizens engaged with the new form of government, as well as the prospects for the success of democracy in the wake of military defeat. In drawing attention to the differences between the German and Austrian experiments with democracy, this dissertation points to the relative strengths of the Weimar Republic when compared to the First Austrian Republic.