1920s
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1929
Events

Constitutional celebration of the Weimar Republic in Berlin's Lustgarten, August 11, 1924
- Roaring Twenties
- The Versailles Peace Treaty comes into force.
- Introduction of radio , long wave , medium wave .
- Weimar Republic
- Political unrest in the Weimar Republic:
- Bloodbath in front of the Reichstag on January 13, 1920
- Kapp putsch
- Ruhr uprising
- March fights in central Germany
- Fememicide ; Assassination of Reich Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger and Reich Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau
- Hitler-Ludendorff putsch
- Ruhr occupation
- Hamburg uprising
- General Hans von Seeckt bans the KPD , the NSDAP and the Deutschvölkische Freedom Party after attempts to rebel in Germany .
- Blood may
- Reich President Friedrich Ebert chooses the song of the Germans as the national anthem of the German Reich.
- Hyperinflation phase of German inflation 1914 to 1923 , one of the most radical monetary devaluations that a large industrial nation has ever experienced.
- October 25, 1929 : on Black Friday ( also: Black Thursday ) there are drastic price losses on the New York Stock Exchange. As a result, the world plunged into the global economic crisis .
- Ireland's independence
- Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic on a non-stop flight in 1927.
- 1919 to 1933: Prohibition in the United States
- Left and right-wing extremist currents
- March on Rome : Rise of Fascism under Benito Mussolini in Italy
- Mustafa Kemal Ataturk shapes Turkey .
- Briand-Kellogg Pact
- The rise and spread of communism after the First World War
- After the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War , the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( Soviet Union for short ) was founded in December 1922
- The NSDAP is founded in the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. The rise of Hitler begins. Adolf Hitler publishes his book Mein Kampf . The SS is founded as a bodyguard for Adolf Hitler . During the Nazi era, it developed into a paramilitary organization.
- The Greater Berlin Act comes into force and makes Berlin a city of four million.
- In 1924, J. Edgar Hoover became head of the FBI he initiated . He retained the post of director for 48 years until his death.
- " Population exchange " (reciprocal displacement) between Turkey and Greece
economy
- 1920: Investors from Antwerp found the Belgian oil company Petrofina .
- 1920: Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Service ( QANTAS ) is established in Winton .
- 1922: Wilhelm Goldmann founds Goldmann Verlag in Leipzig . The German edition of the detective novels of Edgar Wallace becomes the foundation for the publishing success.
- 1922: The media company Time Inc. is founded in New York City (first edition in 1923), which over time becomes the largest publisher in the United States.
- 1923: Introduction of the Rentenmark to combat hyperinflation in Germany .
- 1923: The Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio company is founded (1923) by the brothers Walt and Roy Disney .
- 1923: The Gucci company is founded by master saddler Guccio Gucci as a small workshop in Florence .
- 1924: The Tabulating Machine Company founded by Herman Hollerith in 1896 changes its name to International Business Machines , IBM for short .
- 1924: In Austria the law on currency reform is passed : the schilling replaces the krona .
- 1926: Deutsche Lufthansa is founded.
- 1926: The companies "Benz & Co Rheinische Gasmotorenfabrik Mannheim" ( Benz & Cie. From 1899) and " Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft " founded by the automobile pioneers merge to form Daimler-Benz AG , based in Berlin .
- 1926: Founding of the company IG Farbenindustrie AG in Frankfurt am Main.
- 1926: The Ducati company is founded by Adriano and Marcello Ducati in Bologna ( Italy ). The Società Scientifica Radiobrevetti Ducati initially produced components for radios.
- 1927: Black Friday of the Berlin Stock Exchange on May 13, 1927.
- 1927: Rewe founded as a cooperative in Cologne.
- 1927: The German Reichstag passes the law on job placement and unemployment insurance . The provisional regulation of the unemployment welfare ordinance in the context of war welfare is no longer applicable, there is now a real legal entitlement to unemployment benefits .
- 1927: Foundation of the Fuerth mail order company Quelle .
- 1929: Black Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange, beginning of the Great Depression ; Black friday ; Black Tuesday .
- 1929: The United Paper Works in Nuremberg apply to the Reich Patent Office in Berlin for protection of the Tempo trademark for the handkerchief they produce .
- 1929: An agreement between the entrepreneur Ivar Kreuger and the Weimar Republic establishes the 53-year ignition goods monopoly .
- 1929: Deutsche Bank , Disconto-Gesellschaft , Rheinische Creditbank and Schaafhausen'sche Bankverein merge to form Deutsche und Disconto-Bank (DeDi-Bank). This merger is the largest bank merger in German economic history to date .
Cultural history

An image from the Technicolor Process No. 2 made film The Toll of the Sea (1922)
The Frankfurt kitchen set the standard for modern fitted kitchens from 1926 onwards.
science and technology
- John Logie Baird invents the first television system.
- Advances in film technology
- Warner Brothers produce the first feature film with soundtrack Don Juan (1926), the first feature film with half soundtrack ( Der Jazzsänger , 1927), the first feature film with full soundtrack ( Lights of New York , 1928) and the first feature film with full soundtrack ( On with the Show , 1929).
- United Artists produce the first completely in Technicolor Process No. 2 made feature film ( Der Seeräuber , 1926).
- Charles Best and Sir Frederick Banting discover insulin . This is the first treatment for a person with diabetes mellitus .
- Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin .
- Great advances in quantum mechanics .
- Wave equation and the Schrödinger equation
- Werner Heisenberg formulates the Heisenberg uncertainty principle .
- Copenhagen interpretation
- At the German Motor Show in Berlin in 1921, the first aerodynamically designed car, the Rumpler Teardrop Car , was presented as a world first .
- Discovery of the expansion of the universe
- Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 .
- The Shapley-Curtis debate in Washington sparked a new understanding of the nature of galaxies and the size of the universe among astronomers
- While cleaning up a hill, farmer Peder Platz in Jutland finds a tree coffin . According to investigations by Danish scientists, the girl from Egtved is discovered in it, who was buried in the Nordic Bronze Age (1800–530 BC).
- The German chemist Fritz Winkler discovered plasma .
- Howard Carter discovers the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun .
- Edwin Hubble proves the existence of celestial bodies that lie outside our Milky Way using the Andromeda Nebula .
- MAN develops the first road vehicle with a diesel engine . The truck was presented to the public at the Berlin automobile exhibition in 1924 .
- The Norwegian engineer Erik Rotheim invented the spray can in 1926 .
- In 1926, the first launches liquid rocket by Robert Goddard in the US.
- In 1926 , John Logie Baird demonstrated a working mechanical television to members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain .
- Georges Lemaître presents his thesis about the beginning of the universe , which is later called the Big Bang .
- The German-Austrian engineer Fritz Pfleumer developed a method for magnetic recording of audio signals and applied for a patent. The prototype of his recorder can record around an hour of sound on 900 meters of magnetic tape.
- In 1928 the German Reichspost carried out the first radio image transmissions on a trial basis via its Königs Wusterhausen transmitter with the help of a Fultograph . It is testing a preliminary stage in the German history of television . The station Witzleben transmits the first television images for test purposes in the Berlin research laboratory of the Reichspost.
- Hans Geiger and Walther Müller develop their Geiger-Müller counter tube with which they can detect ionizing radiation . Shortly thereafter, Walther Bothe used the counter tube in his coincidence method to detect electron emission by X-rays .
- Ernest Burgess develops the zone model of urban development .
- The German chief engineer Engelbert Zaschka presented the first folding car in Berlin .
literature
- James Joyce publishes Ulysses .
- Franz Kafkas The Trial is published posthumously by Max Brod .
- Erich Maria Remarque publishes nothing new in the West .
- F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby .
- Hermann Hesse publishes Siddhartha .
- Ernest Hemingway publishes Fiesta and In Another Land .
- Virginia Woolf publishes Mrs. Dalloway .
- The popular children's book Winnie-the-Pooh by Alan Alexander Milne is published for the first time by the London publisher Methuen & Co.
- 1929: The space hero Buck Rogers won the first science fiction - comic as a daily comic strip space in newspapers of the United States . Thirteen American and two Canadian newspapers print the first comic strips with Tarzan as the title character.
- 1929: The cartoon characters Tintin and Struppi by the Belgian draftsman Hergé are presented to the public for the first time.
- 1929: Popeye the sailor appears for the first time, designed by the draftsman Elzie Crisler Segar .
art
Individual contributions
- Pablo Picasso : Three musicians
- Christian Schad : Self-portrait with a model
- Paul Klee : main path and side paths
- Otto Dix : City Triptych
- Max Beckmann : Self-portrait in a tuxedo
- Luis Buñuel : An Andalusian dog
architecture
Movie
- 1920: In the USA, the first film prize in the world is presented with the Photoplay Award .
- 1921: After right-wing extremists have tried in November to destroy the film negative, on December 29, the movie is Nathan the Wise by Manfred Noa with Werner Krauss in the title role in the Berlin Alhambra premiered. The film received positive reviews but soon fell victim to anti-Jewish propaganda. It is the only film adaptation of the play of the same name by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing to date .
- 1922: Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror : This film, directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau , is considered one of the first representatives of horror films . With his visual design, he had a huge impact on the genre.
- 1922: The film The Power of Love (directed by Nat G. Deverich and Harry K. Fairall ) is considered the first 3D feature film .
- 1923: Lee De Forest introduces the first sound film system in New York City and demonstrates his attempts with short musical films .
- 1923: The film production company Warner Bros. is founded in Hollywood.
- 1924: The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer company in Hollywood is created through the merger of three film production companies .
- 1925: Gold Rush (Director: Charlie Chaplin ): Chaplin wanted to be remembered for this film. With the eating of the shoe and the "roll dance" the film contains two famous scenes.
- 1925: Battleship Potemkin (Director: Sergei Eisenstein ): In several votes, this film was voted the best film of all time in the following decades.
- 1927: Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. are the first film greats to immortalize themselves with their prints in the floor of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood .
- 1927: The film The Jazz Singer by Alan Crosland is the first commercial sound film , although there have been numerous experiments with film dubbing in the past. With his success he ensures the breakthrough of the new sound film.
- 1927: Metropolis (Director: Fritz Lang ). After weak commercial success, this film developed into one of the most visually influential works in film history in the following decades. In 2001 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List .
- 1928: Walt Disney publishes Steamboat Willie, the first animated short film with a soundtrack including music, sound effects and dialogues added in post-production.
- 1929: Premiere of the first sound film shot in Germany The night belongs to us in Berlin.
- 1929: At a closed dinner in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel , the first 12 Academy Awards are presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , which was founded the previous year . The German actor Emil Jannings is the first man to receive the award for Best Actor for his roles in the two films His last command and The way of all flesh .
Silent movie
- 1920: The cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Golem as He Came into the World
- 1921: The Indian Tomb / The Tiger of Esnapur , The Sheikh , The Kid
- 1922: Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror , Dr. Mabuse, the player part 1 and 2
- 1923: Skyscrapers of all places! , The Ten Commandments
- 1924: The thief of Baghdad , The Nibelungs , The wax museum
- 1925: Gold Rush , Ben Hur
- 1926: Faust - a German folk tale , Der General
- 1927: The tenant , Metropolis , demon woman
- 1928: The Circus , Steamboat Bill, Jr.
- 1929: People on Sunday , an Andalusian dog , woman in the moon
Sound film
- 1927: The Jazz Singer , Sunrise - a song by two people
- 1928: Steamboat Willie
- 1929: extortion
- 1929: The man with the camera
Music and theater
- Twelve-tone technique
- Neoclassicism
- Groupe des Six
- Chicago jazz
- swing
- Bat
- Recording of the first blues sung in the history of sound recording: Crazy Blues with Mamie Smith .
- Foundation of the Salzburg Festival
- 1920: The song of the labor movement, Brothers, About the Sun, about Freedom is sung in public for the first time in Germany.
- 1924: The Rhapsody in Blue , one of the most famous compositions by George Gershwin , is premiered.
- 1928: First performance of the Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht in Berlin.
- 1928: The Comedian Harmonists make their debut at the Great Berlin Playhouse .
1920s hits
broadcast
- 1920: The Königs Wusterhausen transmitter broadcasts a Christmas concert with instrumental music for the first time. The live concert was followed by letters from private listeners from Luxembourg, Holland, England and the Nordic countries. There were no reactions from Germany, as listening to the radio was prohibited under penalty of punishment.
- 1921: KDKA in Pittsburgh brings the first religious broadcast and sends the first sports report: Florent Gibson of the newspaper Pittsburg Star commented the boxing match between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee in the engine Square, Pittsburgh.
- 1921: The 9XM station at the University of Wisconsin – Madison broadcasts the first weather forecast .
- 1922: The Wirtschaftsrundspruchdienst starts as the first regular radio broadcaster in Germany.
- 1922: The 2LO station broadcasts the first live sports coverage in Great Britain . Future BBC employee Arthur Burrows comments on the boxing match between Ted Kid Lewis and Georges Carpentier in Olympia , London. Due to protests by newspaper publishers, this form of reporting could not establish itself in England until 1927.
- 1922: The Eildienst , a business news bureau closely related to the German Foreign Ministry, founds the German hour as a subsidiary in Berlin . Society for wireless teaching and entertainment mbH.
- 1922: The radio station WEAF from New York broadcasts the world's first commercial .
- 1922: Founding of the private British Broadcasting Company , which five years later becomes the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
- 1923: Wilhelm Kollhoff registers his radio as the first radio participant in Germany . Due to the inflationary period , he pays 350 billion marks for approval.
- 1923: German broadcasting is officially started. Its first broadcast took place on October 29th from 8 to 9 in the evening, which was broadcast by the company “Radiostunde”, later known as “ Funk-Hour Berlin ”, from the Vox house .
- 1923: The first radio receivers with loudspeakers come onto the market in the USA. Until then, you could only watch the program through headphones.
- 1923: With the Ikonoskop, Vladimir Zworykin builds the first usable electronic image scanner.
- 1925: The Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft is founded in Berlin as the umbrella organization for the regional broadcasting companies.
- 1925: First live broadcast of a soccer game on German radio. It was the game Preußen Münster against Arminia Bielefeld . Sports reporter Bernhard Ernst at the microphone .
- 1926: The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) starts broadcasting as a network in the United States with radio programs .
- 1927: Bell Laboratories broadcast a speech by US Secretary of Commerce (and later President) Herbert Hoover over a distance of 200 miles (321 kilometers) via telephone cables . This is the first successful long-distance transmission of a television signal.
- 1927: The American inventor and television pioneer Philo Farnsworth succeeds in demonstrating the transmission of an image in a purely electronic way with the help of a cathode ray tube under laboratory conditions.
- 1927: Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) , the forerunner company, begins broadcasting radio programs in the United States .
- 1928: The Prussian Ministry of Culture founds the radio test center in Berlin to research the technical and artistic possibilities of the new medium.
- 1928: Presentation of the first German television test broadcasts at the 5th Great German Radio Exhibition .
- 1929: The world radio broadcaster starts its first program exchange with other countries. It is the forerunner of Deutsche Welle .
- 1929: The radio opera The ocean air of Bertolt Brecht on the first Atlantic crossing by plane will premiere "radiophonisch".
- 1929: The radio journalist and actor Alfred Braun reports live on the funeral for Gustav Stresemann for radio . His report is one of the most famous in German radio history and is considered the oldest broadcast broadcast.
- 1929: The radio play SOS… rao rao… Foyn by the author Friedrich Wolf , produced by Funk-Hour Berlin , celebrates its radio premiere. The radio play, which describes the (authentic) rescue operation of the dirigible Italia , which got into distress in the Arctic , is the oldest completely transmitted radio play production in German radio history.
- 1929: On May 8th at 11:10 p.m., the Deutsche Reichspost begins an 80-minute test television broadcast, but still without sound transmission.
Sports
- Foundation of several important sports and football clubs. Including Sporting Braga (1921), FC Villarreal (1923), AEK Athens (1924), Olympiacos Piraeus (1925), HC Rotterdam (1925), AS Roma (1927).
- 1920: VI. Summer Olympic Games in Antwerp from April 20th to September 12th.
- 1920: In the USA the later National Football League (NFL) is created at a meeting in the city of Canton (Ohio) . The association organizes American football .
- 1920: The "Black Sox Scandal" at the 1919 World Series is exposed and leads to the demise of the Chicago White Sox .
- 1921: The German Dance Sport Association is established as the Reich Association for Dance Sport through an entry in the Berlin register of associations .
- 1922: The German fighting games are held for the first time.
- 1923: Wembley Stadium in London opens with the Cup final between West Ham United and the Bolton Wanderers .
- 1924: First Olympic Winter Games in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc from January 25th to February 5th.
- 1924: The International Ski Federation FIS is founded in the winter sports resort of Chamonix .
- 1924: VII Summer Olympic Games in Paris from May 4th to July 27th.
- 1924: Foundation of the world chess federation FIDE .
- 1925: A professional league is introduced in Austria by the ÖFB . Austria is the first continental European country with a professional football league.
- 1927: The Sachsenring and the Nürburgring are inaugurated.
- 1927: Edi Hans Pawlata is the first European to do the so-called Eskimo role .
- 1927: Joe Davis helped organize the first World Snooker Championship and won it by beating Tom Dennis by 20:11 frames .
- 1928: Second Olympic Winter Games in St. Moritz from February 11th to February 19th.
- 1928: IX. Summer Olympics in Amsterdam from May 17th to August 12th.
- 1928: Richard Halliburton becomes the first person to swim the entire length of the Panama Canal .
- 1929: The English national football team , which had been undefeated outside of Great Britain by then, loses an international match for the first time on May 14, 1929 . Spain kept the upper hand in Madrid with 4: 3 goals.
society
- 1921: As the Atlantic City Pageant , a two-day beauty pageant begins in Atlantic City for the first time , from which the choice for Miss America develops. 16-year-old Margaret Gorman wins the beauty pageant and is subsequently declared the first Miss America .
- 1921: An advertisement with the slogan One Look is Worth A Thousand Words in the trade journal Printers' Ink turns into a proverb A picture is worth a thousand words .
- 1923: The International Police Congress in Vienna decides to found the International Criminal Police Commission , a predecessor organization of Interpol . The aim is to improve the fight against crime across borders.

The Hollywood Sign
- 1923: A brokerage company advertises real estate purchases in Los Angeles with the logo "Hollywoodlands" . The well-known Hollywood Sign was finally retained from 1949.
- 1924: The first section of the Autostrada dei Laghi between Milan and Varese is given by the Italian King Victor Emanuel III. released as the world's first pure car road .
- 1924: The first radio exhibition opens in Berlin.
- 1924: In Carson City , the first man sentenced to death is executed in a gas chamber .
- 1924: In Chicago during the Prohibition era , Dean O'Banion , the leader of the North Side Gang , is murdered by a trio of killers in his flower shop after a conflict of interests with the Genna family and Johnny Torrio , the boss of the Chicago outfit group . The ensuing gang war spanned several years.
- 1924: In Hanover, Fritz Haarmann is sentenced to death for 24 murders .
- 1925: In the US state of Tennessee the eagerly pursued Scopes trial (also known as the "Monkey Trial") begins against the teacher John Thomas Scopes , who, contrary to the existing laws of the state of Tennessee, does not follow the prescribed biblical doctrine of creation in public schools , but the theory of evolution has taught. He is fined $ 100 on July 21st .
- 1927: The Bath School Massacre , a series of bombings on Bath Comprehensive School, kills 45 people, mostly first to sixth grade students. It is the largest school mass murder in US history.
- 1927: Miss Germany is elected for the first time.
Personalities
politics
- Friedrich Ebert
- Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
- Erich Ludendorff
- Hans Luther
- Wilhelm Marx
- Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
- Benito Mussolini
- Józef Piłsudski
- Roman Dmowski
- Philipp Scheidemann
- Joseph Stalin
- Gustav Stresemann
- Auguste Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg
- Joseph Wirth
- Wilhelm Solf
- Clara Zetkin
science
- Albert Einstein
- Alexander Fleming
- Frederick Banting
- Max Planck
- Niels Bohr
- Sigmund Freud
- Werner Heisenberg
literature
- Vicki Baum
- Alfred Doblin
- Lion Feuchtwanger
- Erich Kaestner
- Irmgard Keun
- Heinrich Mann
- Thomas Mann
- Erich Maria Remarque
- Joachim Ringelnatz
- Ernst Toller
- Kurt Tucholsky
- Ernst knows
- Franz Werfel
Music (composers)
- Arnold Schoenberg
- Igor Stravinsky
- Béla Bartók
- Paul Hindemith
- Alban Berg
- Maurice Ravel
- Franz Schreker
- Karol Szymanowski
- Ernst Krenek
- Duke Ellington
Music (stars)
Visual arts
- Josef Albers
- Marcel Breuer
- Otto Dix
- Lyonel Feininger
- Walter Gropius
- George grosz
- Christian Schad
- Johannes Itten
- Wassily Kandinsky
- Paul Klee
- Gerhard Marcks
- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
- László Moholy-Nagy
- Max Reinhardt
- Oskar Schlemmer
- Mart Stam
- Franz Radziwill
- Theo van Doesburg
- Dressler's art manual
performing Arts
Movie
- Charlie Chaplin
- Sergei Michailowitsch Eisenstein
- Greta Garbo
- Emil Jannings
- Buster Keaton
- Fritz Lang
- Harold Lloyd
- Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
- Pola Negri
- Asta Nielsen
- Anny Ondra
- Henny Porten
- Erich von Stroheim
- Rudolph Valentino
Web links
Commons : 1920s - collection of pictures, videos, and audio files