#177 Katja Hoyer on the Weimar Republic and ‘have you heard of Samuel Pepys?’ (Part 1)
Oh What A Time...
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4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 May 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!
We are truly honoured this week to be joined by one of our favourite historians in the world; it’s German-British author, who penned of one of Elis’ favourite ever books (Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949–1990), it’s Katja Hoyer!
Katja is here to discuss her brand new book ‘Weimar: Life on the Edge of Catastrophe’ which details the collapse of German democracy as the Nazi’s tighten their grip on power.
Elsewhere, is taking a hot air balloon to the North Pole a good idea? We’re going with no. And if you’ve ever asked a historian if they’ve heard of Samuel Pepys, please email in: hello@ohwhatatime.com
Katja’s new book is out now and we can’t recommend it enough, you can get it here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/459779/weimar-by-hoyer-katja/9780241681244
And from now on Part 1 is released on Monday and Part 2 on Wednesday - but if you want more Oh What A Time and both parts at once, you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, what a time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else, ad free, |
| 0:06.4 | plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access |
| 0:11.9 | to live show tickets and access to the Oh Water Time group chat. Plus, if you become an Oh Water |
| 0:16.9 | Time All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. |
| 0:23.7 | For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash oh what a time. |
| 0:28.4 | Hello and welcome to Part 2 of Katja Hoyer. Let's get on with the show. |
| 0:52.5 | Yeah. In terms of instability generally, one thing from the Vimeo Republic I find so far is just the experience of hyperinflation and the madness around that. |
| 0:56.3 | What would that have been like? And did it mean that people just felt that their cash was useless? What was the experience of that of someone going through |
| 1:00.1 | that? Because it's just so hard to imagine what that would be. Yeah, no, that's what I found as well |
| 1:04.6 | because we all know the famous pictures of kind of children playing with lots of banknotes |
| 1:09.2 | or people using like. wheelbarrows full |
| 1:12.5 | of it exactly and that that has an almost like absurd comical you know element to it but people |
| 1:18.0 | obviously at the time had to somehow live with the fact that you couldn't pay for anything it was |
| 1:22.3 | just completely absurd and so again carl is an interesting lens through which to see, like human lens for which to see that period because he's a shop owner. |
| 1:33.6 | And so he suddenly has to sell like typewriters for millions of marks. |
| 1:38.9 | And suddenly these things do find their way into his diary. |
| 1:42.7 | And again, this is interesting because he keeps it originally as a kind of like hiking and outing diary. |
| 1:49.7 | So in the beginning, you just see like, I don't know, 20th of April went up this and that mountain and had a slice of cake at the top or something. |
| 1:59.0 | And then whenever something big happens, you suddenly do see these sort of things seeping |
| 2:03.3 | in. |
| 2:04.3 | And with hyperinflation, he begins to note how much, you know, how much things cost. |
| 2:08.6 | So for example, he writes in there that he buys a bicycle for his wife. |
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