The Jazz Republic: Music, Race, and American Culture in Weimar Germany by Jonathan O. Wipplinger (review)

In his welcome new book, Jonathan O. Wipplinger traces the origins and development of a distinctive "jazz culture" during the Weimar years, thereby shedding new light on the history of jazz in Germany. He provides an insightful analysis of how "foreign voices," especially Americans, black and white, various peoples of African descent, members of the Jewish diaspora, Hungarians, and Russians, all played a significant role in shaping German culture and society during the interwar period, fashioning it into the titular "jazz republic" (15).

The first chapter focuses on how jazz entered and penetrated the German cultural and geographical landscape in the five years that followed World War I, and how it was perceived by a population that had just emerged from their nation's deadliest defeat in history. Wipplinger demonstrates the uniqueness of German jazz culture, by contrasting it with this musical genre's development in the United States and Western Europe, especially the United Kingdom and France. He argues that, for three years following World War I, jazz culture developed significantly differently in Berlin and the occupied cities along the Rhine—namely, Bonn, Koblenz, Cologne, and Wiesbaden—where contacts with "foreign citizens, soldiers and musicians" produced more, and more significant, "encounters with jazz music and jazz bands" (22).

Instead of following a chronological narrative, Wipplinger arranges the next five chapters—which cover the years from 1924 to 1933—thematically, with each chapter discussing a specific "jazz impulse" within Weimar culture (17). Chapter 2 is concerned with Sam Wooding's eleven-man African American jazz band, and how this troupe's visual appeal, as well as its novel brand of New York jazz, made a distinctive first impression on Berlin audiences. Wipplinger mines a vast wealth of sources, in particular concert programs and contemporary reviews, to support his argument that the experience of jazz was essentially an "aural shock of modernity" for Germans at the time (51). The third chapter focuses on the white American bandleader Paul Whiteman, who visited Berlin a year after Wooding, and examines the influences of his "symphonic jazz," which served to unite "tradition with modernity (and vice versa)" (85). Wipplinger shows how this type of jazz proved to be divisive, embraced by both musicians and the audience, but rejected by the music critics, before illustrating how Whiteman's amalgamation of jazz and the symphony inspired modernist authors of the time, such as Hans Janowitz, Rene Schickele, and Gustav Renker, to produce a jazz-informed literature.

Chapter 4 centers on the interrelationships between jazz, revue, gender, blackness, and visual culture in Weimar Germany in the 1920s. By drawing upon psychologist Fritz Giese's concept of "Girlkultur" and the works of influential commentator Siegfried Kracauer, Wipplinger underlines the conflicts between African American jazz and the issues surrounding the white chorus girl (also known as the "Tiller Girl"). The short fifth chapter describes Hoch's Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main, the first postsecondary academic jazz program in Europe, its political significance, and the ways in which it shaped the cultural landscape during the Golden Years of the Weimar Republic. Wipplinger also pays attention to issues arising from this program, including the support and opposition it received, "the fate of German national identity in modernity, and the division between high and low culture" (142).

The Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, a fervent jazz and blues fan, is the focus of chapter 6. Wipplinger argues that the poetic and musical translations of Hughes's works can be seen as a "pivot point for international and transnational exchange" (19) between various diasporic communities and marginalized groups, including African Americans and Jewish Germans. The author also argues convincingly how "the interpenetration of jazz, blues, and other forms of African American music" (166) in Hughes's works had a cultural impact beyond music itself. The final chapter looks at the social, economic, and political circumstances that led to the gradual decline...