Hamilton (Cicely) Modern Germanies

London, Dent, 1931.

First edition, second impression. 8vo. Original decorative cloth. Dust-jacket, priced 4/6.

A perceptive travel and social commentary on 1920s Germany by the novelist, playwright, feminist, and suffragette Cicely Hamilton. Surveying political, cultural and social life across the fragmented postwar states, Hamilton records both the optimism of the Weimar years and the tensions that would culminate in Nazism. First issued in 1931, this later, cheaper edition (likely late 1933) incorporates a newly added chapter, “Postscript: The New Order,” addressing the Nazi regime – an unusually early and appended account of Hitler’s Germany within an existing work.

Illustrated with additional photographs, including images of Hitler at the Nuremberg Rally and of young Nazis, the volume also reflects Hamilton’s feminist concerns. In discussing Nazi pronatalism and racial policy, she wryly questions how Germany would feed its projected population increase, only to be told, ominously, that all would be well “when we have colonies.”