Lessons for civic engagement today

The town of Weimar looms large in German history. This ancient town nestled in the heart of the country was home to some of Europe's greatest thinkers, Goethe and Schiller, Liszt and Nietzsche among them. It gave its name to the ambitious Weimar Republic crafted in the aftermath of the First World War. But it was also where fascism took hold. Where Bauhaus architects first experimented with new ways of living, Buchenwald was dug out of a beech forest.

German-British historian Katya Hoyer has drawn on a wealth of new archival research to tell the story of Weimar through the lives of some of its citizens from the years 1919-1939. 

In this episode, she talks to historian Sophie Scott-Brown about some of these vividly drawn characters who, as the events of history swept them up, became witnesses, perpetrators, victims and bystanders. How did Germany, within a few years, turn from one of the most liberal democracies in the world to a genocidal dictatorship? What choices did individual Germans make that enabled this? And what lessons can we learn to avoid repeating their mistakes? 

Katja Hoyer is Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is the author of Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe.

Dr Sophie Scott-Brown is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia

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