Abstract: The article reflects on the backgrounds to the process of cultural popularization in the Weimar decade. Both the foundation of the German republic and the democratization of society after 1918 further entailed ageneral democratization of culture. In fact, Weimar was, at least to some extent, a fully ›functioning‹ mass democracy, so that ademocratic mass culture and art emerged as a result: the opening up of art and culture to everyone, the blendingof the opposing poles ›high culture‹ versus ›low culture‹ also by intellectual and artistic elites, the rise of the ›salaried masses‹ (S. Kracauer) to become an important social group, the rise of film and radio as mass media as well as the presence of visual media in people’s everday life are all evidence of why the origin of German popular cultu re is inextricably linked to the 1920s.

Abstract: This article analyzes the Scherl Verlag’s popular magazine Filmwelt (1929 – 1943) against the backdrop of the shift from democracy to fascism. Tracing the mix of popular film fandom and amateur photography that characterizes this »Film- und Foto-Magazin«, the authors note a gradual shift from dialogic, interactive (but also normative and didactic) modes of popular address prior to 1933 to a more unidirectional form of top-down communication during the late 1930s and into the early war years. Their reading of Filmwelt contributes to an understanding of the politics of popular culture and media in the transition towards authoritarianism. Drawing on scholarship on amateur photography, film stardom, and the German history of associations (»Vereinswesen«), the article maps both the continuity of popular discourses on photographic media across the cesura represented by the advent of National Socialism, and visible as well as invisible changes that index the increasing fascization of the magazine’s themes, rubrics, and modes of address over its fourteen-year run, as well as the instant ›aryanization‹ of its personnel in the wake of Hitler’s ascent to power in 1933.

Abstract: The weekly magazine Die Woche was produced by the conservative Scherl publishing house; from 1916 it was under the control of Germany’s leading media proprietor, Alfred Hugenberg. This contribution argues that in 1933 readers of Die Woche were familiar with many of the ideological ideals promoted by the National Socialists, even though the increasingly radical tone was new. To illuminate this development, two editions of 1925 are set against two of March1933. The focus is on topics that are by implication relevant for daily life, such as advertising, leisure time, photography and depictions of history. By 1933, the magazine proves less entertaining than in the mid-1920s: the growing political control over topics such as sport and current affairs now dominated the more varied approach that existed beforehand. However, an analysis of Die Woche as an example of popular media also questions some of the stock observations of Weimar politics and culture that we make use of.

Abstract: The article deals with the question which stylistic and thematic continuities and ruptures can be found in the illustrated entertainment magazines Das Leben and Das Magazin after the handover of power to the National Socialists. For this purpose, all issues from December 1932 to December 1934 are subjected to a close reading. On the one hand, it is important to gain an overview of the development e.g. of stagings of gender and nude photos, depictions of big city and country life etc.; on the other hand, negotiations of Adolf Hitler are analysed. It turns out that the magazines contribute to a suggestion of normality by behaving i n a l argely resilient way towards National Socialist themes. Das Magazin also features apoliticising aestheticisations of Hitler. All in all, the pre-pop-cultural consumer aesthetics in entertainment magazines of the 1920s were compatiblewith the NS regime and fit into its propagandistic concept even by ignoring the political changes.

Abstract: This is an article about the communist weekly Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ), the second most widely circulated illustrated paper during the late Weimar Republic. By examining research from various fields, contemporary sources, and the paper itself, I explore how AIZ represented its network of worker photographers, well-known intellectuals, writers, colporteurs, and, importantly, its readers. The article also discusses AIZ’s successes and its significance in the face of Nazi Germany before and after 1933. Despite the presumed disruption caused by the fascist takeover, there are notable continuities, including an exiled version of AIZ, circulation through disguised publications, and a peculiar attempt by the Nazis to promote their agenda by mimicking AIZ with a publication called Arbeit in Bild und Zeit.

Abstract: Today, Ruth Landshoff-Yorck is considered an important feuilletonist of the Weimar Republic. She had been publishing frequently in the Weimar press since 1927. However, in mid-1933, her publications in the German press ceased abruptly. Even her novel, Leben einer Tänzerin, which had already been proofread and typeset, was no longer being produced, though she was not yet featured on any of the National Socialists’ blacklists. Up to that point, her texts had never been overtly political. Apparently, it was her Jewish heritage, along with her emancipatory views (particularly those related to gender) in the context of the Berlin bohemian scene and its associated periodicals, that led to her no longer being featured. After moving primarily to Paris in 1933, she turned to poetry for a time and released three small, elegant volumes of her poems through private printing in 1934 – 1935. In 1935, she published her first non-German work, a French translation of her Emigranten-Novelle, which paved the way for her later political writings in English during her exile in the United States beginning in 1937.