Socials studies

1. German Christian women voting in 1919. German Christian women were newly

enfranchised.

Eastern European Jewish women are asked for ID cards in Berlin's "Barn Quarter" in 1920.

Life in Weimar Germany was often unpredictable, as a former soldier, Henry

Buxbaum, discovered one evening in the early 1920s:

“The train was pitch-dark. The lights were out, nothing uncommon after the war when

the German railroads were in utter disrepair and very few things functioned orderly. . . . That

night, we were seven or eight people in the dark, fourth-class compartment, sitting in utter

silence till one of the men started the usual refrain: “Those God-damned Jews, they are at the

root of all our troubles.” Quickly, some of the others joined in. I couldn’t see them and had no

idea who they were, but from their voices they sounded like younger men. They sang the same

litany over and over again, blaming the Jews for everything that has gone wrong with Germany

and for anything else wrong in this world. It went on and on, a cacophony of obscenities,

becoming more vicious and at the same time more unbearable with each new sentence echoing

in my ears. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I knew very well that to start up with them

would get me into trouble, and that to answer them wasn’t exactly the height of wisdom, but I

couldn’t help it. . . . I began naturally with the announcement: “Well, I am a Jew and etc., etc.”

That was the signal they needed. Now they really went after me, threatening me physically. I

didn’t hold my tongue as the argument went back and forth. They began jostling me till one of

them . . . probably more encouraged by the darkness than by his own valor, suggested: “Let’s

throw the Jew out of the train.” Now, I didn’t dare ignore this signal, and from then on I kept

quiet. I knew that silence for the moment was better than falling under the wheels of a moving

train. One of the men in our compartment, more vicious in his attacks than the others, got off

the train with me in Friedburg. When I saw him under the dim light of the platform, I

recognized him as a fellow I knew well from our soccer club. . . . I would never have suspected

this man of harboring such rabid, antisemitic feelings.”

In the Weimar Republic, Germany’s schools remained centers of tradition. Most

teachers were conservative, both in their way of teaching and in their politics, and

many were anti-socialist and antisemitic. A young man known as Klaus describes

his schooling in the 1920s:

“We were taught history as a series of facts. We had to learn dates, names, places of

battles. Periods during which Germany won wars were emphasized. Periods during which

Germany lost wars were sloughed over. We heard very little about World War I, except that the

Versailles peace treaty was a disgrace, which someday, in some vague way, would be rectified.

In my school, one of the best in Berlin, there were three courses in Greek and Roman history,

four in medieval history, and not one in government. If we tried to relate ideas we got from

literature or history to current events, our teachers changed the subject. I really don’t believe

that anyone was deliberately trying to evade politics. Those teachers really seemed to think that

what went on in the Greek and Roman Empires was more important than what was happening

on the streets of Berlin and Munich. They considered any attempt to bring up current political

questions a distraction . . . because we hadn’t done our homework. And there was always a

great deal of homework in a school like mine, which prepared students for the university. At

the end of our senior year, we were expected to take a detailed and exceedingly tough exam

called the Abitur. How we did on the exam could determine our whole future. Again, the Abitur

concentrated on our knowledge of facts, not on interpretation or on the expression of personal

ideas.”