# Beacon of culture, heart of darkness – What Weimar can tell us about holding back fascism

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-bunker-news-without-the-nonsense-1209382/beacon-of-culture-heart-of-darkness-what-weimar-can-tell-us-about-holding-back-fascism-2
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-bunker-news-without-the-nonsense-1209382/beacon-of-culture-heart-of-darkness-what-weimar-can-tell-us-about-holding-back-fascism-2.md
Podcast: [The Bunker – News without the nonsense](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-bunker-news-without-the-nonsense-1209382)
Published: 2026-05-12T03:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/the-bunker/episodes/6a2ad2fe440b9d7bbf6be460
Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/6a2ad2e9440b9d7bbf6bde6b/e/67d7daf2-6577-11f1-b92f-d356d6edf943/media.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-bunker-news-without-the-nonsense-1209382/episodes/beacon-of-culture-heart-of-darkness-what-weimar-can-tell-us-about-holding-back-fascism-2
Duration seconds: 2016

## Resource

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. The German town of Weimar exudes a dark fascination, and not just because Hitler loved to visit it. How did Germany’s cultural capital – home of the Bauhaus, Goethe, Schiller and the doomed inter-war experiment with democracy – also become one of Nazism’s earliest strongholds and the location for the Buchenwald concentration camp? Why did the Weimar Republic fall? And can it really teach us how to hold back fascism in our time? Historian and journalist Katja Hoyer tells the story of the town and Germany through the lives of ordinary people in her riveting book Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe . She talks to Andrew Harrison about how Germany’s beacon of culture became its heart of darkness – and the lessons of Weimar for today. • Buy Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe through our affiliate bookshop and you’ll help fund the podcast by earning us a small commission for every sale. Bookshop.org’s fees help support independent bookshops too. www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by Andrew Harrison. Audio production by Robin Leeburn. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Artwork by James Parrett. Managing Editor: Jacob Jarvis. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production. www.podmasters.co.uk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-bunker-news-without-the-nonsense-1209382/episodes/beacon-of-culture-heart-of-darkness-what-weimar-can-tell-us-about-holding-back-fascism-2/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-bunker-news-without-the-nonsense-1209382/beacon-of-culture-heart-of-darkness-what-weimar-can-tell-us-about-holding-back-fascism-2.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.