Weimar

A fresh and gripping account of the interwar years seen through the lens of Germany’s most legendary town. By skilfully weaving into the political narrative the stories of ordinary people, Katja Hoyer gives readers a vivid sense of what it was like to be alive then and there. Brilliantly researched, this is history at its very best

Julia Boyd

Britain's favourite German historian... Hoyer has been beavering away in the archives to tell the story of the crack-up of democracy in interwar Germany, through a vivid cast of characters

Sunday Times

A bright, young historian... Strap in to watch the slow collapse of a society, amid a throng of fascists, socialists, artists and politicians

Telegraph, Books to Look Forward to in 2026

From literary and artistic gem to Nazi stronghold, how a quaint town encapsulated the best and worst in German history ... Weimar is an excellent read

Financial Times

The autopsy of a liberal democracy, told in the words of its own citizens. Katja Hoyer tracks the everyday acts of omission and concession in the face of ruthless wrong, showing how the compliant and the complacent ultimately undermine the brave. A book about a hundred years ago— without question a book for now

Neil MacGregor

Its writing is gripping, Hoyer’s command of existent histories is clear, and her primary research is thorough and inventive... Reading Hoyer’s book, I recalled Svetlana Alexievich’s stated aim in Voices from Chernobyl: to tell the stories of ‘little, great people’ who voice their ‘own, little histories’ while ‘big history is told along the way’. This is where Weimar excels

History Today

Weimar is populated not by abstractions but by people... Hoyer writes with verve and a keen eye for telling detail... She shows with quiet acuity how ordinary, self-respecting Weimarers succumbed to the siren call of Nazism

The Times

Superb... Katja Hoyer finds the town of Weimar a perfect microcosm for a country teetering into darkness... intelligent, original and well-researched... an exemplary insight into a grim chapter in German history

Simon Heffer, Daily Telegraph

Humane history-writing at its best

Literary Review

Such an important book

The Independent

Lucid, lively... Entirely to her credit, Hoyer describes the vices, vanities, fears, cowardice, heroism, naivety, cynicism, opportunism and the very human instinct to protect one's loved ones without indulging in self-righteous moralising

Ian Buruma, New Statesman

A fascinating history of Germany from 1914 to the Second World War

Daily Mail

A nuanced account of the spiritual and cultural heart of Germany … Hoyer serves up history with a human heart

Irish Times

Hoyer's book confronts us with troubling ambiguities ... Understanding why ordinary, even likeable, people turned away from democracy is, she argues, essential to safeguarding freedom ... that task could scarcely be more urgent

Guardian

This clever inter-war study takes the city of Weimar as a microcosm of the doomed republic that bore its name. We meet a rich cast of ordinary Germans, struggling to survive – then turning on each other. Hoyer is one of our brightest young historians: Weimar is another triumph to her name

The Telegraph

A leading historian offers the definitive account of Weimar, a city that is central to Germany's literary tradition - as well as to the darker chapters of its history

New Statesman

Most histories of interwar Germany focus on Berlin (sleaze, cabarets, expressionist art) or Munich (beer, Nazis in lederhosen), so it’s clever to tell the ill-starred story of the Weimar Republic through the 35,000-strong town of Weimar itself, home to Goethe and so many parks. Katja Hoyer weaves her story using the lives of various locals — book-keepers, hoteliers, party activists — to show what it was like to live on "the edge of catastrophe" and show why so many Germans succumbed to Nazi fever

The Times

There has been a renewed uptick in books about the Weimar Republic, with many observers worrying about possible contemporary parallels. Historian Hoyer opts for a different tack, going to the picturesque Thuringian town that gave its name to Germany’s first ill-fated experiment with democracy to explore, via a collection of individuals, how the home to many of Europe’s cultural giants became an early Nazi stronghold

Financial Times

Katja Hoyer's superb Weimar focuses on a cross-section of characters in a single German town in the inter-war years to help us better understand the rise of Nazism

Saul David

Katja Hoyer has pulled off another triumph. Weimar tells the story of the city that gave its name to the doomed German republic, formed in the aftermath of the First World War ... Hoyer has delved deep into the German archives to paint a vivid and compelling picture of a city that had dreamed of democracy but ended in darkness. A great read

Giles Milton

A humane and profoundly sympathetic history of the Weimar Republic, demonstrating the neuroses, the passions and the human failings that would propel that polity to disaster. Totally absorbing, it is highly recommended

Roger Moorhouse