Klaus Nathaus

Leisure Clubs and the Decline of the Weimar Republic: A Reassessment

In contrast to the common assumption that voluntary associations from male voice choirs to gymnastic clubs mediate political culture, this article stresses that leisure clubs were frequented first and foremost as places where sociability could unfold. This form of social exchange, which suspends differences of social status or political attitudes, is relevant for the development of the political system, as it can work as an antidote against a fundamental politicization of all social relations. In Weimar Germany, leisure clubs did not realize this potential. This article argues that this was mainly the consequence of state authorities interfering with the voluntary sector of leisure.

Euro Pop: The production and consumption of a European popular culture in the twentieth century, German-Italian Centre Villa Vigoni, Menaggio, 8–11 June 2009

Aims and Scope The conference brought together historians and sociologists from Germany, Britain, Italy, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United States to discuss current research projects on the history of popular culture in Western Europe in the realms of music, mass media, sports, tourism, food and fashion. The meeting focused on two questions: First, the participants searched for European particularities in the production and consumption of popular culture. Were there any similarities between the creative industries in the countries of the European Community? Does the comparison with other regions highlight European traits in the production of cultural goods and services as well as their consumption? Did popular culture facilitate social exchange or even a common identity among Europeans? Second, the conference tackled the methodological challenge of integrating approaches and findings of economic history with studies that concentrate on the reception of culture. How can the explanatory power of studies that analyse structures and processes of cultural production be combined with the strength of interpretative approaches that scrutinize the practices of reception? To provide the participants with insights into the American case and to stimulate methodological discussion, the organizers invited sociologist, Richard A. Peterson, (Nashville) to open the proceedings with a presentation on the ‘production of culture perspective’. This approach has been developed by Peterson and others since the early 1970s and has become highly influential in the sociological community in the United States. It focuses on how the symbolic elements of culture are shaped by the systems within which they are created, distributed, evaluated, taught and preserved. At first, the approach excluded aspects of meaning and treated symbols as any other industrial good. With the ‘cultural turn’ and questions of meaning

Popular Music in Germany, 1900–1930: A Case of Americanisation? Uncovering a European Trajectory of Music Production into the Twentieth Century

This article discusses the thesis that popular music in early twentieth-century Germany was Americanised by shifting the focus from the meaning and reception of music to the way it was produced and disseminated by professionals, from music publishers and composers to bandleaders and critics. Firstly, it stresses a key difference in the way the music business was modernised on both sides of the Atlantic around 1900. While in the US the sheet-music trade became ‘Taylorised’, the music business in Germany, as elsewhere in Continental Europe, was transformed into a rights industry. Secondly, the paper highlights the prominence of Austrian music producers and their repertoire in Germany and suggests that, at least in a business sense, popular music in Germany was Austrianised rather than Americanised. Thirdly, it proposes that ‘Jazz’ after the First World War was hardly a straightforward import of American culture, but a site where incumbents and newcomers to the music profession struggled for position.

The Production of Popular Culture in Twentieth-Century Western Europe: Trends in and Perspectives on ‘Europop’

In a recent book on the Americanisation of Britain between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s, historian Howard Le Roy Malchow takes up the familiar question of to what extent British popular culture has been influenced by American people, ideas, media organisations and money. Summarising the literature on this topic, he distinguishes between two lines of research. The 1970s had been dominated by studies that analysed the American influence as a form of ‘cultural imperialism’, a one-way global export of American values, facilitated by economic might and powerful institutions, which was said to have either led to a flattening of culture and shallow consumerism or promoted democracy and civility abroad. A revisionist approach that rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s stressed the agency of local recipients and highlighted that consumers in the importing countries managed to adapt US culture to their particular needs and in effect hybridised the American import. Malchow’s own study then goes on to prove that many popular phenomena which had been labelled British or European by both contemporaries and historians were, in fact, American in content and personnel. The ‘1968 Underground [ . . . ] of Notting Hill, Dam Square, Christiania, or Kreuzberg [ . . . ] was [ . . . ] first and foremost driven forward by penetrative, media-amplified American cultural hegemony’, ‘[t]he British rock music world of the late sixties and early seventies [ . . . ] was instructed and led by the larger American scene and market’ and ‘[t]he American origins and character of the British Underground press in the late sixties and early seventies are hardly in doubt.’ According to Malchow, British music journals like the New Musical Express as well as the DJs on pirate radio stations essentially imitated American formats, and even Monty Python’s Flying Circus is registered as largely American due to its theme song (a Souza march) and the contribution of its American member, Terry Gilliam. Malchow concludes his book with the statement: ‘It is hard to escape the fact that in Britain ‘America’ was for many a strong and often determining influence in the shaping of midand late-twentieth century mentality and aspiration – however much it may have melded with the postcolonial and the new European.’ With Malchow’s Special Relations and Victoria de Grazia’s Irresistible Empire, a study that bears its argument for an overwhelming impact of US popular culture on European societies in its title, historical research on cultural Americanisation has come full circle. After two decades of studying the creative appropriation of Hollywood films and Rock ‘n’ Roll music by European consumers, a re-focusing on the political economy