Weimar Culture - Social Environment

Social Environment

By 1919, an "influx" of labor had migrated to Berlin turning it into one of the most fertile grounds for the modern arts and sciences in history. This caused "a boom in trade, communications and construction." Even before the War, this change significantly turned over the ways of the royalty. In response to the shortage of pre-war accommodation and housing, tenements were constructed not very far from the Kaiser's Stadtschloss and all the other majestic structures that were erected in honor of former royalties. People used their backyards and basements to run small shops, restaurants, workshops and haulage carts. This led to the establishment of bigger and better commerce in Berlin, including its first department stores, prior to World War I. An "urban petty bourgeoisie" along with the middle class colonized and flourished the wholesale commerce, retail trade, factories and crafts.

Types of employment were becoming more modern, shifting gradually, but noticeably, towards industry and services. Before World War I, in 1907, 54.9% of German workers were manual labourers. This dropped to 50.1% by 1925. Office workers, managers, and bureaucrats increased their share of the labour market from 10.3% to 17% over the same period. Germany was slowly becoming more urban and middle class. Still, by 1925, only a third of Germans lived in large cities; the other two-thirds of the population lived in the smaller towns or in rural areas. The total population of Germany rose from 62.4 million in 1920 to 65.2 million in 1933.

The Wilheminian values were further discredited as consequence of World War I and the subsequent inflation, since the new youth generation saw no point in saving for marriage in such conditions, and preferred instead to spend and enjoy. According to cultural historian Bruce Thompson, Fritz Lang movie Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922) captures Berlin's postwar mood:

The film moves from the world of the slums to the world of the stock exchange and then to the cabarets and nightclubs–and everywhere chaos reigns, authority is discredited, power is mad and uncontrollable, wealth inseparable from crime.

Politically and economically, the nation was struggling with the terms and reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles (1918) that ended World War I and endured punishing levels of inflation.

• Children being fed by a soup kitchen, 1924.

• A man reads a sign advertising "Attention, Unemployed, Haircut 40 pfennigs, Shave 15 pfennigs", 1927.

• An elderly woman gathers vegetable waste tossed from a vegetable seller's wagon for her lunch, 1923.

• Sketch of a woman in a café by Lesser Ury for a Berlin newspaper, 1925.