A heady mixture of pagan-inspired rituals, firework displays launched on river boats and rallies with folk music was the nationalist answer to the freewheeling modernism of the Weimar Republic.
The cultural offerings of national socialism, he believes, held such mesmerising appeal for so many Germans precisely because it commanded a range of tastes from middle-class conservatism to emerging mass culture – a combination that “mobilised vast energies” across the population by appealing to fustian sorts and neophytes alike.
reflections on attending Brecht and Weill’s collaboration The Threepenny Opera, summing up its cast of misfits and waspish socialist message as a “glorification of criminality”, she exemplifies the fruitful cultural soil among an educated but parochial bourgeoisie into which the rising National Socialist party could plant its seed.