Censorship of the Arts in Germany, 1890-2000
The project will analyze attempts to censor a variety of arts in several media – literature, the visual arts, theater, radio, film, and television – during five different eras: the Wilhelmine Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic, and the Federal Republic of Germany. These regimes represent every major form of rule in 20th-century Europe, encompassing constitutional monarchy, presidential democracy, fascist dictatorship, communist dictatorship, and parliamentary democracy. By examining the interaction of the state and the arts in these diverse conditions, the project hopes to generate a spectrum of censorship practices and cultural responses that is not only characteristic of Germany, but applicable to the modern world more generally.
Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University
Munich and Theatrical Modernism: Politics, Playwriting, and Performance, 1890-1914; Berlin Cabaret. He currently is completing a book entitled Berlin Alexanderplatz: Radio, Film, and the Death of Weimar Culture.