Performing the Nation in Interwar Germany: Sport, Spectacle and Political Symbolism, 1926-36

Performing the Nation in Interwar Germany challenges the notion that the Nazis invented the use of aesthetics for the staging of their mass events. Instead, the book argues that the period from the mid-1920s to the mid-1930s should be considered as a whole with regard to the development of political aesthetics and festive culture. A stress on rhythm, moving bodies, shapes and community already characterised mass events in the republic and strongly influenced festivities, parades, sporting events and spectacles organized by the republican state. Consequently, the originality of Nazi propaganda and representation was limited as the public was well accustomed to mass staged events by the state and political organisations alike by the time the National Socialists came to power. 'Nazi aesthetics' were thus less quintessentially 'Nazi' than an expression of the Zeitgeist of the 1920s and 1930s.