Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe
Monday 5 October
Castle Hill Baptist Church
4.30pm
Join historian Katja Hoyer to explore the dramatic story of Weimar – the German town that gave its name to a bold democratic experiment but later became synonymous with the rise of Nazism.
Home to cultural giants such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, then, in the 20th century, overshadowed by the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp, Weimar stood at the crossroads of art, politics – and extremism.
Katja traces the lives of ordinary citizens of Weimar from 1919 to 1939, navigating revolution, creativity and creeping dictatorship: a powerful, human, portrait of a society on the brink of catastrophe.
Katja will be in conversation with Festival Director Aaron Manning.