When we hear about the Weimar Republic, most of us think to wheelbarrows of banknotes used to buy one loaf of bread or stakes of notes used to fuel stoves. In short, we think to the hyperinflation of the middle 1920s.

We might think hyperinflation was a specific German situation since we seldom heard of any other such. It wasn’t. In fact, most countries after World War I knew a period of hyperinflation, an occurrence that had never been uncommon after a war. But the German case was peculiar, researched and dissected in detail ever since because a lot of data were available in a time when data and charts were becoming more common. And anyway Germany was from the beginning a different case from all the others.

It is normally quite easy to understand why war breaks out and who is pitted against whom. Not so for the Great War. And this is true to the point that it has been defined as one of the most enigmatic events in contemporary history.

It would be misleading to think that Germany was the only nation where authoritarian ideologies became popular after World War I. In fact, all European nations let themselves be fascinated with this kind of ideologies, spurred by the difficulties of emerging from the destruction of the war and by the necessity to deal with profound and unexpected social changes.

After the war, many old regimes had fallen and nations were experimenting with new forms of government. Germany, with her experiment of democracy, was far from being an isolated case.

But in a continent where monarchy had been the norm for centuries, learning to manage a republic was hard for the politicians as well as for the population, and after five years of struggles across lands and social strata, people’s patience was very short. They wanted to see results. They wanted to go back to prosperity as fast as possible, and they also didn’t want to deal with all the changes that were happening and destabilizing the community no less than the war had already done. Whoever could promise them that was welcome.

It is often argued that it’s easier to say what Expressionism was not, rather than to say what it was. Diverse and eclectic, this movement stressed deconstruction rather than building, individuality rather than the communion of feelings and experiences, making it inherently difficult to define.

Some say that rather than being a way to create art, a distinguished style or method of creations, Expressionism was more of a state of mind. The way artists felt about themselves, their society and the future of that society was more important than the way they expressed that feeling.