EXC 2060 C3-3 - Death in Weimar. Religion and the political culture of death in the Weimar Republic

Basic data for this project

Description

The years of the Weimar Republic are considered to be a period of great political, but also cultural burdens. The latter included the collective coping with the millions of deaths of German soldiers during the First World War. The implications of the military cult of heroes for the political culture of the Weimar Republic have already been analyzed by historians. The 'civilian' death in the Weimar Republic, on the other hand, has received little attention. The project therefore aims to provide answers to the following questions: What role did representations of death play in the religious, aesthetic and political culture of the Weimar Republic? Which political and ideological conflicts were initiated by new forms of burial such as cremation? What was the relationship between religious tradition and technical innovation with regard to dying, death and mourning? The study will first focus on concrete practices in dealing with death in the urban space. Based on the debates about cremation and the new regulations of cemeteries, the study will examine the extent to which religious and free-thinking groups contended with each other in public about the interpretation of death, but also the extent to which ideologically indifferent dynamics of modernization and urban development influenced the change of concepts and practices in dealing with death. In a second step, this micro-analytical view of concrete practices will be broadened to examine larger cultural-historical contexts, in which dealing death was of great importance (medicine, aesthetics, philosophy, etc.).