Hutted Histories: Weimar with Katja Hoyer

Weimar looms large in German history: a crucible of democracy and dictatorship. This ancient town nestled in the heart of the country was home to some of Europe's greatest thinkers, Goethe and Schiller, Liszt and Nietzsche among them. It gave its name to the ambitious Weimar Republic crafted in the aftermath of the First World War. But it was also where fascism took hold. Where Bauhaus architects first experimented with new ways of living, Buchenwald was dug out of a beech forest.

Weimar shows us a town and its people on the edge of catastrophe. Drawing on a wealth of new archival research, acclaimed historian Katja Hoyer takes us from 1919 to 1939 as she tells the stories of the men and women who lived through the new republic and Hitler's regime. We encounter a vividly drawn cast of characters, from bookbinder Carl Weirich and hotel owners Rosa and Arthur Schmidt, to Friedrich Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth. Here are fascists and socialists, artists and workers, politicians and citizens, who, as the events of history swept them up, became witnesses, perpetrators, victims and bystanders.

An unforgettable picture of lives and choices in extraordinary circumstances, Weimar takes us deep into the heart of the storm – to the town that dreamt of a better world, and woke up to tyranny.

About Katja:

Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is the author of the international bestsellers Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 and Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire. Her latest book is Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe. Katja is a columnist for Berliner Zeitung and a regular contributor to British and American news outlets such as the BBC, Bloomberg, The Telegraph and The Guardian. She co-hosts the German history podcast Reichs & Republics and publishes a biweekly Substack newsletter called ZEITGEIST.