Steppenwolf | Historical Context

Steppenwolf Historical Context

The Weimar Republic

In an attempt to create a parliamentary democracy in 1919 following World War I, German social democrats established the Weimar Republic in Germany. However, the Weimar Republic was beset by difficulties from the beginning. These included German resentment of the Versailles Treaty that followed World War I, which imposed punitive conditions on Germany in an attempt to ensure it would not threaten the victorious European powers again. Economic problems of Weimer included runaway inflation in the early 1920s and high unemployment during the worldwide depression in the early 1930s. Economic distress and social unrest combined to undermine the fledgling republic, which ended in 1933 with the establishment of the Third Reich by Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party.

Significant issues in the literature of the Weimar Republic were the role of technology in society, nationalism, communism, and the cultural influence of the United States, among other countries. These were...
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