Cinema was ideally suited to capture the mood of Weimar - films weren't originally called "motion pictures" for nothing! I want to show you short clips from two classic 1920s films that really capture the spirit of movement and speed.

The first clip is from Berlin - Sinfonie eine Großstadt (Berlin - Symphony of a Great City or Berlin - Symphony of a Metropolis). This was documentary film from 1927 by Walter Ruttmann, and shows numerous scenes of movement in the city. The tight editing adds to this sense of movement:

The second film clip comes from a science fiction film, Fritz Lang's Metropolis (also 1927). This film nearly bankrupted the studio thanks to its use of advanced special effects (advanced for the time, of course). The scenes you're about to watch took months to create because they are made up largely of stop-action photography (this is used when you want to show models or inanimate objects move). Every second of a normal celluloid film is made up of 24 still photos. In the scenes you're about to watch, we see a futuristic city in which hundreds of cars are moving through the city on multiple expressways. These cars are models, so for each second of the scene, imagine that there had to be 24 photos made, which meant that for each photo all those cars etc had to be moved a teensy bit.

In Metropolis, Freder, son of one of the city's great industrialists, witnesses, with horror, how workers deep underground put their lives in danger to supply the energy the city needs. So Freder goes to see his father in order to implore him to make conditions better for them. And like all films about the future, this film is also commenting on the present.

Your task: after watching these two clips, can you formulate in words a contemporary conception of what city life was like in the 1920s?

Towards the end of the First World War an artistic movement called dada started, at first in Switzerland, but then once the war was over spreading throughout the western world.

Hugo Ball is credited with writing the first dada manifesto in 1916 as part of a performance art piece he did in Zurich:

Dada is a new tendency in art. One can tell this from the fact that until now nobody knew anything about it, and tomorrow everyone in Zurich will be talking about it. Dada comes from the dictionary. it is terribly simple. In French it means "hobby horse." In German it means "good-by," "Get off my back," "Be seeing you sometime." In Romanian: "Yes, indeed, you are right, that's it. But of course, yes, definitely, right." And so forth.

An international word. Just a word, and the word a movement. Very easy to understand. Quite terribly simple. To make of it an artistic tendency must mean that one is anticipating complications. Dada psychology, dada Germany cum indigestion and fog paroxysm, dada literature, dada bourgeoisie, and yourselves, honored poets, who are always writing with words but never writing the word itself, who are always writing around the actual point. Dada world war without end, dada revolution without beginning, dada, you friends and also-poets, esteemed sirs, manufacturers, and evangelists. Dada Tzara, dada Huelsenbeck, dada m'dada, dada m'dada dada mhm, dada dere dada, dada Hue, dada Tza.

How does one achieve eternal bliss? By saying dada. How does one become famous? By saying dada. With a noble gesture and delicate propriety. Till one goes crazy. Till one loses consciousness. How can one get rid of everything that smack of journalism, worms, everything nice and right, blinkered, moralistic, europeanized, enervated? By saying dada. Dada is the world soul, dada is the pawnshop. Dada is the world's best lily-milk soap. Dada Mr. Rubiner, dada Mr. Korrodi. Dada Mr. Anastasius Lilienstein.

In plain language: the hospitality of the Swiss is something to be profoundly appreciated. And in questions of aesthetics the key is quality.

I shall be reading poems that are meant to dispense with conventional language, no less, and to have done with it. Dada Johann Fuschgang Goethe, Dada Stendhal. Dada Dalai Lama, Buddha, Bible and Nietzsche. Dada m'dada. Dada mhm dada da. It's a question of connections, and of loosening them up a bit to start with. I don't want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people's inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own. If this pulsation in seven yards long, I want words for it that are seven yards long. Mr. Schulz's words are only two and a half centimetres long.

It will serve to show how articulated language comes into being. I let the vowels fool around. I let the vowels quite simply occur, as a cat miaows... Words emerge, shoulders of words, legs, arms, hands of words. Au, oi, uh. One shouldn't let too many words out. A line of poetry is a chance to get rid of all the filth that clings to this accursed language, as if put there by stockbrokers' hands, hands worn smooth by coins. I want the word where it ends and begins. Dada is the heart of words.

Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn't I find it? Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.

Kurt Schwitters took the nonsensical aspect of dada to its extremes in his art and writing. Ursonate (Primeval Sonata), a sound poem, is his signature piece. He started writing it in 1922 and first performed it in 1925; he continued working on and performing it for many years. I'd like you to listen to it, and I've provided two links: a recording of him reciting a portion of the poem (the poem starts about six seconds in), plus a written version with which you can follow along:

Link to text of Ursonate (this is the whole Ursonate; the portions read by Schwitters are marked in blue).

Finally, I'd like you to look at a work of art created by Hannah Höch, Cut with a Kitchen Knife (from 1919). Höch specialized in collages, works of art made from newspaper and magazine clippings. This work is incredibly dense and complex, but these two items will help you understand it:

• Here is the artwork. If you move your mouse over the picture, you will see that the person who has uploaded the piece has annotated sections of it; you'll see faint squares on the picture. Move your mouse to those areas to see what information the uploader has provided.

• This article places Dada in a wider historical context.

Your task: you've now read a dada manifesto and experienced two of its most important works. Is this movement political or apolitical?

Bauhaus was an artistic movement, or perhaps rather a style, that developed in Weimar and would influence design and architecture throughout the 20th century.

Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, wrote the following manifesto in 1919:

The ultimate aim of all visual arts is the complete building! To embellish buildings was once the noblest function of the fine arts; they were the indispensable components of great architecture.Today the arts exist in isolation, from which they can be rescued only through the conscious,cooperative effort of all craftsmen. Architects, painters, and sculptors must recognize anew and learn to grasp the composite character of a building both as an entity and in its separate parts. Only then will their work be imbued with the architectonic spirit which it has lost as “salon art.”

The old schools of art were unable to produce this unity; how could they, since art cannot be taught. They must be merged once more with the workshop. The mere drawing and painting world of the pattern designer and the applied artist must become a world that builds again. When young people who take a joy in artistic creation once more begin their life's work by learning a trade, then the unproductive “artist” will no longer be condemned to deficient artistry, for their skill will now be preserved for the crafts, in which they will be able to achieve excellence.

Architects, sculptors, painters, we all must return to the crafts! For art is not a “profession.” There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. In rare moments of inspiration, transcending the consciousness of his will, the grace of heaven may cause his work to blossom into art. But proficiency in a craft is essential to every artist. Therein lays the prime source of creative imagination.

Let us then create a new guild of craftsmen without the class distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist! Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith.

Here are some sites to get you oriented:

Overview of Bauhaus history, structure, and ideals

A collection of pages on the different types of objects produced at Bauhaus (e.g. architecture, arts and crafts, design objects)

And one more short article that ties it all together:

"The Bauhaus and Its Influence" by Anna Hoffman

Your task: Bauhaus style is almost 100 years old, and yet it is still considered modern. Why do you think that might be?

Literal translation

What do they want?
Is this Culture
that every man is outlawed
who is - wise and well-,
however with blood
of his own kind perfused
that nevertheless this
category
is banned by the law,
who is in feeling
in lust and playing
and in its kind related?

And still most of us are proud,
to be cut from different cloth!

Chorus
We are just different from the others
who are being loved only in lockstep of morality
who wander curiously through a thousand wonders
and who are only up to the trivial.
But we do not know what the feeling is
since we are all children of a different kind of world
we only love lavender night, who is sultry
because we are just different from the others!

Why the torment
to impose
morals of others on us?
We, listen to this,
are what we are,
even if they want to hang us.
But who thinks,
that we are going to be hanged
for that one we would have to feel sorry
but soon, listen up,
all of a sudden,
our sun will be shining too.
Then we will have contended successfully for our rights
we will not suffer anymore, but we will be tolerated!

Version by Jeremy Lawrence (sung by Ute Lemper on her album Berlin Cabaret Songs)

What makes them think they have the right to say what God considers vice
What makes them think they have the right to keep us out of Paradise
They make our lives hell here on Earth
poisoning us with guilt and shame
If we resist, prison awaits so our love dares not speak its name
The crime is when love must hide
From now on we'll love with pride

Chorus

We're not afraid to be queer and different
if that means hell -- well, hell we'll take the chance
they're all so straight, uptight, upright and rigid
they march in lockstep we prefer to dance
We see a world of romance and of pleasure
All they can see is sheer banality
Lavender nights are our greatest treasure
where we can be just who we want to be

Round us all up, send us away
that's what you'd really like to do
But we're too strong, proud, unafraid
in fact we almost pity you
You act from fear, why should that be
What is it that you are frightened of
The way that we dress
The way that we meet
The fact that you cannot destroy our love
We're going to win our rights
to lavender days and nights

Chorus