The Cultural-Political Background to Klaus Mann's Mephisto

1. The Weimar Republic

   • World War I and the Abdication of the Emporer
   • The Republic of Germany
   • The Versailles Treaty
   • Inflation
   • Political Instability
   • Flourishing of the Avantgarde
   • Theater: Bertolt Brecht, Max Reinhardt
   • Film: Fritz Lang, Murnau, Billy Wilder
   • Berlin as Gay and Lesbian Mecca
   • W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood (Liza Minnelli in Cabaret)
     
   • Stock Market Crash and Unemployment

2. The Third Reich

   • 1933 Hitler appointed Chancellor
   • Reichstag Fire
   • Joseph Goebbels and the Purge of Jews, Socialists, Republican, Intellectuals and Artists
   • Hermann Goering
   • The Nuremberg Racial Laws (1935)
   • The Night of Broken Glass/Kristallnacht (Nov. 9, 1938)