Timeline

1910

Berlin’s population doubles to two million people

1911

Expressionists move from Dresden to Berlin

1912

Social Democratic Party is the largest party in the Reichstag

1913

Expressionists attain great success with their city scenes

1914

Artists George Grosz, Oskar Schlemmer, Otto Dix, Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann and Franz Marc enlist in the army

World War I begins

1915

Grosz declared unfit for service, Beckmann suffers a breakdown and Schlemmer is wounded

1916

Dada begins at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich

Marc dies in combat

1917

Lenin and Trotsky form the Soviet Republic after the Tzar is overthrown

1918

Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates and flees to Holland

Richard Huelsenbeck writes a Dada manifesto in Berlin

Kurt Schwitters creates Merz assemblages in Hanover

Revolutionary uprisings in Berlin and Munich

Social Democratic Party proclaims the Weimar Republic

World War I ends

1919

Treaty of Versailles signed

Freikorps assassinates the Spartacist leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg

Cologne Dada group formed

Bauhaus established in Weimar by Walter Gropius

1920

Kapp Putsch fails after right-wing forces try to gain control of government

Inflation begins in Germany

First International Dada Fair opens in Berlin

National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) founded

Berlin is the world’s third largest city after New York and London

1921

Hitler made chairman of the NSDAP

1922

Hyperinflation continues

Schlemmer’s Triadic ballet premieres in Stuttgart

1923

Inflation decreases and a period of financial stability begins

Hitler sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for leading the Beer Hall Putsch

1924

Reduction of reparations under the Dawes Plan

Hitler writes Mein Kampf while in prison

1925

The Bauhaus relocates to Dessau

New Objectivity exhibition opens at the Mannheim Kunsthalle

1926

Germany joins the League of Nations

1927

Unemployment crisis worsens

Nazis hold their first Nuremburg party rally

Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis released

1928

Hannes Meyer becomes the second director of the Bauhaus

Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The threepenny opera premieres in Berlin

1929

Young Plan accepted, drastically reducing reparations

Street confrontations between the Nazis and communists in Berlin

Stock market crashes on Wall Street, New York

Thomas Mann awarded the Nobel Prize for literature

1930

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe becomes the third director of the Bauhaus

John Heartfield creates photomontages for the Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ)

Nazis win 18% of the vote and gain 95 seats in the national elections

Minority government formed by Heinrich Brüning, leader of the Centre Party

Resignation of Chancellor Hermann Müller’s cabinet, ending parliamentary rule

1931

Unemployment reaches five million and a state of emergency is declared in Germany

1932

Nazis increase their representation in the Reichstag to 230 seats but are unable to form a majority coalition

Mies van der Rohe moves the Bauhaus to Berlin

Grosz relocates to New York as an exile

1933

Nazis organise book burnings in Berlin

Mies van der Rohe announces the closure of the Bauhaus

The first Degenerate art exhibition denouncing modern art is held in Dresden

Many artists including Gropius, Kandinsky and Klee flee Germany

Beckmann, Dix and Schlemmer lose their teaching positions

Hindenburg names Hitler as chancellor

Hitler creates a dictatorship under the Nazi regime

1934

Fifteen concentration camps exist in Germany

1935

The swastika becomes the flag of the Reich

1936

Germany violates the Treaty of Versailles

Olympic Games held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Berlin

Spanish civil war begins

Thomas Mann deprived of his citizenship and emigrates to the United States

1937

German bombing raids over Guernica in Spain in support of Franco

Purging of ‘degenerate’ art from German museums continues

Beckmann, Kirchner and Schwitters leave Germany

The Nazi’s Degenerate art exhibition opens in Munich and attracts two million visitors