This seminar on Weimar and National Socialist Germany analyzes the advent of the country’s first democracy after WWI, its destruction between 1929 and 1933 and the subsequent building of the National Socialist dictatorship. How does the destruction of Germany’s first democratic republic provide a map for how democracies die? What lessons can Germany’s history provide for the current political moment? In analyzing the country’s movement from democracy to dictatorship an interdisciplinary variety of texts will be studied, covering topics from political violence and economic instability, to the languages of civil society and the importance of trust in a democratic polity.