Invisible Fatherland: Constitutional Patriotism in Weimar Germany . By Achilles, Manuela.

In her new, unapologetically conviction-driven book, Manuela Achilles follows a number of recent scholars in steadfastly refusing to read the Weimar Republic backwards ‘from its ending’ in 1933 (p. 11). Mid- to late twentieth-century historiography, she argues, asked the wrong question of Germany’s first democracy, namely why it failed so spectacularly after only fourteen years despite all the elaborate safeguards contained in its written constitution. Or at least the answers it gave are ‘wrong’ for present-day Western academic audiences grappling with ‘Weimar’ not only as a common European and American ‘heritage’ but also as an urgent ‘calling’ in the face of ‘the recent resurgence of far-right and neofascist politics’ (pp. 5, 10, 11). And for Achilles herself this is personal: her hometown of choice, Charlottesville, Virginia, where she teaches at the local public university, was the site of a violent ‘Unite the Right’ demonstration in 2017, ending in the death of counter-protestor Heather Heyer when a car was deliberately driven at her and several others. Many of the author’s students, colleagues, friends and co-residents, influenced by headlines in major American newspapers but also no doubt reflecting the public mood in general, were moved to inquire, in bleak terms, ‘Are we living in Weimar again?’ (pp. 1, 4).