Höhenrausch

Fifteen years like a century - an exciting new perspective on the brief life between the wars. Germany 1918. The end of World War I, revolution, the victory of democracy. At the same time, a triumphant march of liberated lifestyles begins. Everything is supposed to change fundamentally: the New Woman, the New Man, New Living, New Thinking. As the economy begins to improve in the mid-twenties, Germany transforms into a different country. Women conquer racetracks and tennis courts, go out alone in the evenings, cut their hair short, and do not think about marriage. Unisex becomes fashionable, androgyny and experimentation flourish. Jähner tells of the invention of leisure, of boxing halls and dance palaces, and of the hotspots of the New Era, from the office to urban traffic, from the department store as a promise of happiness to the street as a site of fierce struggles. So much of it seems astonishingly modern today. The preference for irony, the straightforward and direct approach. But there is also the fear of the "devaluation of all values," the dominance of the cheap. A large part of the German population does not see itself in this awakening. As money becomes scarcer and the future darker, the deep division of society reveals itself, along with the inability to endure it. Harald Jähner provides a comprehensive overview of this vibrant, rich era like never before - and paints a picture of a torn country full of immense and frightening energies. It is disturbingly similar to us and - hopefully - yet completely different.