Weimar Trauma

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“What keeps mankind alive? The fact that millions are daily tortured stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed?” These lyrics, that resonate during the act 2 finale of Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera (1928), encompass notions of trauma and prompt the overarching theme of my thesis research. This thesis seeks to explore trauma as a form of performance that is engrained in historical contexts and may be used as an analytical lens by which to view cultural (e.g., theatre, dance, music) and social performance (i.e., the performance of everyday life, maintenance of social constructs, etc.). Thus, contributing to the current dialogue on cultural memory and trauma, specifically to further understanding of the relationship between …show more content…

Following the traumas of World War I, the Weimar Republic experienced economic woes (e.g., hyperinflation), budding new political ideologies and extremism, and radical advances in the arts. During the beginning of the Weimar Republic, Weimar culture was heavily influenced by German Expressionism, but this style changed drastically with the introduction of New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit). The New Objectivity outlook sought to reject the aesthetics and romanticism of Expressionism and focus more on themes of deliberateness, preciseness, and objectivity. Due to this, the Weimer Republic was ripe with contrasting artistic aesthetics and expressions that stirred debate and formulated a vibrant …show more content…

For the purposes of this thesis, two prominent works created during the Weimar Republic will be analyzed, Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s political-satirical operas, The Threepenny Opera (1928) and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny (1930). The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny both offer a socialist critique of capitalism as well as portraying characters that embody memory and traumas of the time. For example, the lead male in The Threepenny Opera, Mack the Knife, elicits the horror and charm of the period through his grotesque nature and, therefore, may be analyzed as a site of memory. In The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny, Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt is on prominent display as America is viewed as a strange land emphasizing the violence and greed of the social classes. Thus, both The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny maintain theatrical, social, and historical implications that may aid in the understanding or presentation of cultural memory and trauma within collective

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