Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany

By Janet Ward

"This outstanding book has retrieved all the luminous qualities of its subject matter to produce an astonishing revelation of gleaming appearances on splendid display. It is unrivaled by any previous study."—Marcus Bullock, coeditor of Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings 1913-26

"Weimar Surfaces creates provocative new connections between the historical constellations that found a privileged expression in Weimar Berlin and the more contemporary debates on the legacies of modernism and modernity. A compelling study."—Sabine Hake, author of The Cinema's Third Machine

"Janet Ward's study of Weimar architecture and design is the most comprehensive and integrated study of the surface of Weimar experience yet written. . . . A first-rate and stimulating book."—Sander L. Gilman, coauthor of Hysteria Beyond Freud

Germany of the 1920s offers a stunning moment in modernity, a time when surface values first became determinants of taste, activity, and occupation: modernity was still modern, spectacle was still spectacular. Janet Ward's luminous study revisits Weimar Germany via the lens of metropolitan visual culture, analyzing the power that 1920s Germany holds for today's visual codes of consumerism.

Paperback
358 pages
University of California Press, 2001
6.1 x 0.9 x 8.9 inches
ISBN 9780520222991
German History, Urban Studies,