The Jazz Republic

The Jazz Republic considers the history and critical reception of jazz music during Germany’s Weimar Republic, showing the wide-ranging influence of American jazz on German culture in the early twentieth century. How did jazz travel across the Atlantic to Germany and how did German writers and artists respond to this new, modern music from America? The book examines both jazz music and the histories of foreign and home-grown jazz artists who shaped Germany’s exposure to this African American art form. It also looks at the manifold responses to jazz in the Weimar Republic and tracks the shifting responses of Germans at a time when jazz itself underwent a great many changes.