The Fever of Unrest – Germany 1923
The most turbulent and exciting year of the Weimar Republic
1923 is the year of hyperinflation, when employees transport the banknotes of their weekly wages in wheelbarrows. 1923 is the year of the occupation of the Ruhr Valley and a heavy wave of strikes. 1923 is the year in which communist and National Socialist uprisings are bloodily suppressed. And it is the year of radical contrasts between abject poverty on the one hand and a blooming entertainment culture on the other.
1923 is, in its ambivalence, both the end of the post-war period and the start of the Golden Twenties in the Weimar Republic.
Christian Bommarius pieces together the panorama of a year of extremes through a multitude of masterfully told stories and portraits, last but not least inspired by a quote from Stefan Zweig, who wrote that nothing made the German people so bitter and hateful and, in the end, induced them to welcome Hitler so enthusiastically as the inflation.
- A plethora of perspectives, characters and themes linked by a year frantically accelerated by dramatic events
- The panorama of a country in a state of agitation, the portrait of a feverish society
- Inflation, insurrections, attempted coups – and a hot, thriving popular culture
- For readers of Florian Illies, Harald Jähner and Philipp Blom
Christian Bommarius
Christian Bommarius, born in 1958, lives in Berlin. He is a lawyer and journalist who worked for newspapers for many years, e.g. as the chief commentator for the Berliner Zeitung. Christian Bommarius is a recipient of the Otto Brenner Prize, and in 2018 he was awarded the Heinrich Mann Prize.
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