When Gustav Stresemann, the successful foreign minister, died in October 1929, contemporaries wondered what would happen to the republic now. A fascist coalition was just being formed, which came to power in 1933; Farmers threw bombs, public budgets suffered from growing deficits, and soon the parliamentary system seemed paralyzed. Democratic republic or fascist state - that was the alternative from the summer of 1930. What followed - the rise of radical forces, the pulverization of the bourgeois milieus, the revolt of the middle classes, the overestimation of the conservatives and nationalists who imagined they could tame Hitler, impoverishment and fear of civil war - led to the most criminal dictatorship of the 20th century. Jens Bisky tells how the Weimar Republic was destroyed in a whirlwind of hardship and bitterness. Politicians and journalists of the time have their say, exhausted Social Democrats, perplexed liberals, nationalist desperados, writers, lawyers, officers. How did they perceive the situation? What options did they have? - The great panorama of an extreme time that still casts its shadow on the present. Biography Jens Bisky, born in Leipzig in 1966, studied cultural studies and German language and literature in Berlin. He wrote for the "Berliner Zeitung" and is now the features editor of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung". Jens Bisky, who is a member of the board of the Heinrich von Kleist Society, is one of the outstanding experts on Prussia in this country. New product