A Long-Distance Call: Scenes from the Weimar Republic

The artist Käte Hoch paints her friend Erich Müller-Kamp talking on the phone at his desk. When making a long-distance call, Kurt Tucholsky advises, it is important to speak clearly and avoid any patois so that the wiretappers can keep up with the conversation. For a self-portrait, Hoch wears the colors of the suffragettes and a bob cut. Young white-collar workers, too, cut their hair short. They type fast, chain-smoke, and spend their evenings at the movies or in a dance hall. They love the Charleston and the shimmy and listen to sentimental ballads, swing, and jazz. 

Irmgard Keun’s "Artificial Silk Girl" dreams of slender silhouettes and shoes with lizard toe boxes. Ré Soupault devises a transformer dress that can be changed right at the office into a completely different look for the evening. Gender roles become permeable at the cabaret, monocles send signals. Bordellos provide an established setting for sex work. 

The economy is thriving, often on credit; parts of the population sink into poverty, and not only during the hyperinflation period and the Great Depression. Disabled veterans, working women, jobseekers, and street vendors hawking bouquets of violets are everyday sights, giving the lie to the Roaring Twenties. Oskar Maria Graf joins a committee handing out antifascist leaflets, feminists meet in Schwabing, as does the Munich Antiwar Committee, and a local chapter of the revolutionary artists’ association ASSO is cobbling together a magazine. George Grosz depicts the rise of the Nazis and caricatures the Hitler salute.

The new theater of Helene Weigel and Bertolt Brecht longs for the power of boxing and attempts dialogues that pack a punch. The first radio programs in Germany, produced under government oversight, are broadcast in 1923—Max Radler paints a factory worker listening intently. In 1930, Tim Gidal takes a photograph at the Deutsches Museum of one of the first television broadcasts.

The exhibition focuses on specific stories and tangible details rather than formulating grand theories about the Weimar period. Its objective is to make contact with the buried potentials of the Weimar Republic—a long-distance call. 

With works by Käte Hoch, Heinrich Hoerle, Karl Hubbuch, Lotte Jacobi, Grethe Jürgens, Jeanne Mammen, Gabriele Münter, Christian Schad, August Sander, Rudolf Schlichter, and more. 

In cooperation with the Münchner Stadtmuseum and with generous support from a private collection 

Curated by Karin Althaus, Adrian Djukić and Matthias Mühling