In 2019 German liberal democracy is mired in crisis: the mass parties of center right and center left are increasingly losing members and supporters, a far-right party is on the rise, and the parliamentary arithmetic is becoming more and more convoluted. In the wake of the most recent election to the Bundestag in September 2017, the political scientist Albrecht von Lucke spoke of “Weimar conditions” while media outlets like the Bayerischer Rundfunk and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung devoted entire series to comparisons between recent developments and the social conditions of the 1920s.

During coalition talks, Christian Democratic chancellor Angela Merkel allegedly warned the libertarian FDP and the Greens of the need to avoid repeating the mistakes of the era that led to the rise of Nazism. A hundred years since it was established in the wake of World War I, the Weimar Republic seems to be enjoying something of a “renaissance.”

This fresh interest in the era between World War I and the Nazi dictatorship is especially apparent in the success of hit TV series Babylon Berlin. The most expensive series ever produced for German television, it follows the travails of a police inspector in the doomed Republic. No simple crime drama, it captures the mood of an era that has all too many resonances for our own.