Living on the Edge: The Roaring Twenties and World Crisis

Abstract

This chapter deals with narratives about a period which is characterized on the one hand by post-war chaos and fundamental changes in the European nation-state landscape, and on the other hand by utopian, revolutionary hopes and dreams of a new life after a terrible war. All dreams in the end collapse after the devastating world crisis in 1929 and the rise of Nazism. Drawing on historical descriptions of this period, the main analytical focus is on the transnational European docudrama Krieg der Träume/Clash of Futures (2018), one of the most complex and successful German historical series Babylon Berlin (2017), and Dennis Potter’s series Pennies from Heaven (1978). In these television series, a chaotic and complex historical reality is reflected in very different and highly innovative forms.