The Weimar Republic (so called as the parliament which drafted its constitution in 1919 sat in Weimar owing to unrest in Berlin) lasted for fourteen years and four months, two years longer than the Third Reich that succeeded it. Its history is beset with ironies. Its first president, Friedrich Ebert, a social democrat (and a former innkeeper), turned out to be the embodiment of petit-bourgeois conservatism. Having ditched the monarchy, he made a bargain with the army: they would defend the nascent republic in return for maintaining the old officer corps. This enabled the regime to survive five chaotic years marked by numerous violent attempts to overthrow it from both the Left and the Right. 

During the same period it was sullied in the eyes of many Germans by two baleful happenings: the signing (under duress) of the much-resented Treaty of Versailles in June 1919 and the hyperinflation of 1923, caused by money-printing, which destroyed the savings of the middle class. The economy, however, recovered surprisingly quickly from this financial disaster and the years 1924–9 were marked by growing confidence and prosperity. Ebert died in 1925 and Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was elected as his successor. To general surprise, this ultra-conservative and staunch monarchist proved, at least during his first years in office, to be a faithful servant of the republic. Meanwhile Germany found a statesman of the first rank in Gustav Stresemann, briefly chancellor in 1923 and then foreign minister until his death in 1929, who presided over the republic’s readmission to the international community. The ‘Golden Twenties’ were marked by a great flowering of art, music, literature, fashion, cinema, photography and architecture, as well as by a relaxation of traditional morals and notable advances in science and philosophy. 

Harald Jähner, a former editor of the Berliner Zeitung and author of an admired book on Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War, turns his attention to the aftermath of the First World War in Vertigo. His opening chapter conveys well the sense of shock that accompanied the