-
Flights of Fancy: The Kriegsspiel and the Cinema in Weimar Germany
- German Studies Review
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 44, Number 3, October 2021
- pp. 449-468
- 10.1353/gsr.2021.0075
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
abstract:
The middle years of the Weimar Republic in Germany (1924–1929) are often referred to as its "stabilized period," a period that also saw a resurgence of German militarism. A particular mode of vision evidenced the growing militarist disposition: a mobile, aerial gaze that arrayed space below it as the sovereign subject's exceptional Spielraum, or "space for play." By 1924, German militaries had been weaponizing play for a full century, in the form of the Kriegsspiel, the world's first actionable simulation of real space-time. During the Weimar Republic, this playful, aerial gaze would be identified with a new media technology: the cinema.