Weimar Germany
On sale
30th April 2026
Price: £24.99
‘Sebestyen reminds us once again why he is one of the best historians writing today’ ANDREW ROBERTS, author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny
In the years after the First World War, Berlin was – as Vladimir Nabokov described it – a place ‘of dangerous glamour and worldliness, of tawdry cynicism, where art and riot flourished side by side.’
The Weimar Republic was Germany’s postwar experiment with democracy, and a time of unprecedented cultural, intellectual and artistic freedom. Berlin was at the cutting edge of quantum physics and psychoanalysis; its nightlife showcased grand opera and dissolute cabaret. Bauhaus architecture and modernist painting flourished, and it rivalled Hollywood as a capital of film. But beneath the glamour was a deeply polarised society of extremes plagued by economic disasters, populist leaders fuelling culture wars, and an uneasy political settlement that would soon spawn the horrors of Nazism.
Covering fifteen years from the end of the First World War to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933, Weimar Germany tells the definitive story of Germany’s interwar republic and descent into fascism. Featuring an extraordinary cast of characters including Vladimir Nabokov, Albert Einstein, Marlene Dietrich, Adolf Hitler, Billy Wilder, Thomas Mann, Joseph Goebbels, Christopher Isherwood and Rosa Luxemburg, Weimar Germany is a gripping and evocative account of how the fledgling German democracy died.
In the years after the First World War, Berlin was – as Vladimir Nabokov described it – a place ‘of dangerous glamour and worldliness, of tawdry cynicism, where art and riot flourished side by side.’
The Weimar Republic was Germany’s postwar experiment with democracy, and a time of unprecedented cultural, intellectual and artistic freedom. Berlin was at the cutting edge of quantum physics and psychoanalysis; its nightlife showcased grand opera and dissolute cabaret. Bauhaus architecture and modernist painting flourished, and it rivalled Hollywood as a capital of film. But beneath the glamour was a deeply polarised society of extremes plagued by economic disasters, populist leaders fuelling culture wars, and an uneasy political settlement that would soon spawn the horrors of Nazism.
Covering fifteen years from the end of the First World War to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor in 1933, Weimar Germany tells the definitive story of Germany’s interwar republic and descent into fascism. Featuring an extraordinary cast of characters including Vladimir Nabokov, Albert Einstein, Marlene Dietrich, Adolf Hitler, Billy Wilder, Thomas Mann, Joseph Goebbels, Christopher Isherwood and Rosa Luxemburg, Weimar Germany is a gripping and evocative account of how the fledgling German democracy died.
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Reviews
A fast-paced and dramatic account of this tumultuous decade that could not be more timely. Sebestyen has brought a vast cast of characters to life and in doing so reminds us of the fragilities of civil society and democracy
Victor Sebestyen has achieved that rare thing to do well: a marriage between impeccable scholarship with pacy readability. Weimar Germany is as gripping as a novel and crammed with dramatic details of human action (and inaction) which brilliantly illustrate his argument that the collapse of Weimar Germany and the rise of Hitler was not inevitable. What canny insight this book offers into the insecurity of our own times
Sebestyen has succeeded triumphantly at that hardest of historians' tasks: defeating the tyranny of hindsight. The Weimar Republic is usually seen solely through the prism of the horrors that followed it, but this book rightly treats it as a fascinating historical period in its own right. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Sebestyen reminds us once again why he is one of the best historians writing today